Paying Children to Read Sends Wrong Message About Books

Last week’s Reading Page package about Gov. Gray Davis’ new program that pays public schools to encourage pleasure reading drew this pointed response from one educator.

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Paying young children to read books is almost as dumb as paying teenagers not to drink.

Such behavioral control overlooks, even undermines, the intrinsic benefits of both reading and sobriety. Offering dollars for reading sends kids the message that reading is an onerous task that few would choose to perform without a reward.

As part of Gov. Gray Davis’ far-reaching educational initiative, California established a $2-million Reading Award Program. Essentially the program was a contest in which public schools competed to see who could read the most pages during a six-month period. The 400 elementary and middle school “winners” received $5,000 each. Many cash-strapped schools participated with enthusiasm. They badly need that money to buy books.

In the rush to get the money, school officials turned around and showered their students with incentives: T-shirts, free pizza, dessert certificates, as well as elaborate schemes of charts and achievement targets.

What’s wrong here is not the motive but the method. Although incentives may be an effective way to inspire employees to sell more cosmetics or cars, they are not the best way to encourage reading.

Reading should be its own reward. With programs like the governor’s or Pizza Hut’s “Book It!” the goal shifts from reading books to winning a prize. The lesson we most want to teach is that reading brings tremendous pleasure. Reading for pizza is most definitely not a lifelong skill.

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I am not immune to the allure of incentives. A few years ago I worried that my son would go through life never having read “Great Expectations.” In a moment of idiocy, I offered to buy James the $75 pair of jeans he lusted after if he would read Dickens over the summer. Dumb, dumb, dumb! Of course the kid sweet-talked me into buying the jeans first--then read “The Godfather” instead.

The true incentive, both in classrooms and at home, is having authentic conversations about books. I remember when Richard Preston’s “The Hot Zone” first came out in paperback. The book is a gruesomely graphic account of scientists’ efforts to control the Ebola virus. Someone in James’ circle of friends talked about a particularly disgusting passage, and suddenly this gaggle of 10-year-olds were all reading a book that I thought was too difficult for them. They weren’t reading for a prize or, heaven forbid, an A or to improve their reading skills. They were reading for pleasure.

In my classroom, I always have students keep track of the books they read over the course of the school year. Come June, we pull out these reading logs and reflect on the direction their reading has taken. We talk about which books were difficult to finish and which ones they would recommend to next year’s 10th-graders.

Many students can’t believe they have actually read 20 books. “But it didn’t feel like we were working that hard, Mrs. Jago!” No need for a contest to determine who is No. 1. Every reader is a winner.

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Carol Jago teaches English at Santa Monica High School and directs the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA. She can be reached at jago@gseis.ucla.edu