Prizes for sitting still

A four-year-old in Riyadh comes home from kindergarten with a plastic ring and a paper star. She is delighted, and she explains the system. If you sit on your mat and do not talk, the teacher gives you a star. Three stars buy something from the prize box.

Tomorrow she plans to sit even more still.

It is hard not to admire how efficient it is. In one small loop, a child learns two lessons together. Quiet compliance is what gets rewarded. And the reward for compliance is something to own, something that will be broken by the weekend.

Most of us went through a version of this, and most of us never really left. Points for flying the same airline whether or not it suits the trip. A badge for opening an app every day. A free tenth visit, earned by never trying the place next door. The loop changes its costume and keeps its shape: hold still where you are told, and a trinket will follow.

None of this is wicked. Order is useful in a room of twenty small children. Loyalty schemes pay for themselves or they would not exist.

But it is worth asking what the loop is teaching. A child who learns that staying put is how you earn things grows into a shopper, a worker and a neighbour who is very good at staying put, and not much else.

The things worth doing rarely happen on the mat. They happen when someone stands up without being asked.

I wonder how much of an ordinary adult week is still spent sitting quietly, waiting for the star.