Doug Johnson

Most of my Head for the Edge columns, updated and edited, can be found in my book School Libraries Head for the Edge. Buy it and I might be able to afford a nicer nursing home one day. Thank you.

Creating Fat Kids Who Don’t Like to Read
Head for the Edge, September 1999

…few people stop to think that the company that pays the most usually has to. Dale Dauten

All books should be scary books. I don’t mean they need to be frightening in the boogey-man sense of a Stephen King or an Anne Rice novel, but I like them hair-raising because they make me doubt some of my most cherished beliefs.

Alfie Kohn’s classic book Punished by Rewards: The Trouble With Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’S, Praise, and Other Bribes (Houghton Mifflin, 1993) is just such a heart-stopper. In it, he argues that extrinsic motivation not only doesn’t achieve long-term desired behaviors, but actually works against building those very habits and attitudes. And this includes the willingness to read independently!

Kohn, through examples and research, demonstrates how rewards can punish those who do not receive them; how rewards can rupture relationships between students and between students and teachers; how rewards ignore the reasons for a desired behavior; and how rewards can discourage risk-taking. But the single most devastating conclusion he draws from his research is that rewards can actually discourage desired behaviors.

Human beings, even very young ones, deduce that a task must be undesirable if it has to have some extrinsic payment for its performance, argues Kohn. (see the opening quote). He singles out the Book-It program that gives children pizza for reading a set number of books. He predicts such a program will create a generation of chubby children who really don’t read for enjoyment.. “If you’ve got to give me pizza to get me to read, reading must be pretty awful thing,” he believes kids rationalize.

Such a conclusion really flies in the face of what most of us were taught in our mainly behaviorist-based schools of educational philosophy. Gee, what motivation does the rat have to run the maze if there isn’t cheese at the other end?

So what is a media specialist to do? We want all kids to read and to enjoy reading independently, but know that not all of our students come with the intrinsic motivation to do so. Many of us are accustomed to using stickers, food, parties, and programs like Accelerated Reader that often link “points” earned to some kind of reward. Throw AR and other reading promotions out?

Be fore we do, let’s instead look at ways programs that track, recognize, and promote student reading can be used wisely. Penny McAllister, a librarian from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, shares how she has done so:

I am in a school in which our basic philosophy is based on Kohn’s Punished by Rewards and yet use AR all the time very successfully, and with no prizes or other stuff that (AR) recommends. …As the years have gone by we have fine-tuned the use of AR so that the only type of “thing” we do is recognize the kids as they move from point-club to point-club. I’ve circulated 43,000 books to 270 kids (in the past seven months). The kids are happy and so are the teachers and parents. Parents who have left our school always remark that the thing they miss the most is that their new school doesn’t encourage reading like we do.

Why do we even care about point clubs? I’ve got several children in the 100 point club who are reading on grade level (and in special ed). That means that they have read between 200 and 250 books to get there, most of them read during the school day. In another school they wouldn’t have read 25 books!

Please don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. AR can work well, even if you don’t give out the gizmos!

Penny’s remarks suggest some reasonable guidelines for using reading motivation programs like Accelerated Reader: As a media specialist, I would ask myself:

1. Does my reading promotion program stress personal accomplishment and individual accomplishment? Do students have the ability to set their own reading goals? Can students at a variety of reading levels and abilities meet target goals or will only the very best readers be recognized? Are only set percentage of students recognized for their accomplishments or will all students who reach a goal be acknowledged?
2. Does my reading promotion program set goals that promote collaborative work? Are only individuals recognized for the amounts they have read, or can small groups or classes collaborate?
3. Is my reading promotion program only part of my total reading program? Do I still emphasize books, magazines and other reading materials that may not “count” in the promotional reading program? Are my students also reading books because of hearing exciting booktalks, listening to enthusiastic peer recommendations, and being given well-constructed classroom bibliographies tied to content areas?
4. Is my reading promotion program available to my students for only a limited duration during the school year? Do my students get the chance to read for the sake of reading after the promotion is over, to really experience the true, intrinsic rewards that come from being lost in a story or learning interesting facts? Have I tried to determine whether my program really leads to life-long reading behaviors?
5. Does my reading promotion program stay away from material rewards like food, stickers, or parties? Are students or groups recognized for meeting their goals through public announcements and certificates? If I have to give out some physical reward, is it at least a book? (Or low-fat, sugar-free!)

We all want our kids to not just read, but love reading. It’s one of the things that has always separated what we do a media specialists from what reading teachers do. They teach them how to read; we teach them to want to read. Please read Kohn’s book and design thoughtful activities that build those circulation figures for all the right reasons.

Oh, we also want all our children to do research and information-based problem solving, but know that for many students that the grade is the primary motivator for quality work. How we can make research projects intrinsically motivating will be the subject of the next Head for the Edge column. Stay tuned…