It seems that libraries all over the country have motivational summer reading programs, to encourage kids to read during their summer vacation.  And since everyone agrees that reading is a good thing, these programs must be a good thing, right?

 I don’t think that they’re bad, but I don’t particularly care for them.  When my kids were younger, I didn’t sign them up for it, but now that they’re older and have asked to do it, I agreed.  My concern about reading programs is that the stress is on external motivation – the underlying message is, ‘read a book so you can get a prize’, though they supposedly are saying ‘read a book because reading is fun’.  There’s no difference if you read a 30 page easy reader or a challenging thick novel, so if someone is focusing on reading a certain amount of books to get points or prizes, they’re going to read the short and easy books. 

I love reading, and am constantly broadening my knowledge of many things thanks to my reading, and want my kids to also love reading.  The environment in our house is very book friendly – we read books to our littlest kids, have oodles of books around of our own and from the library, and continue reading out loud as a family as the kids get older.  As a result, my kids all enjoy books.

I think external motivation cheapens the value of what you are trying to motivate a child to do.  The underlying message is, ‘reading by itself isn’t fun, so we’ll give you prizes because that’s the only way to get you to do it’.  There’s a place for that, since it might pull in reluctant readers and help them find that reading is enjoyable.  But it tends to demotivate, or only works for the duration of the incentive program.  I remember participating in a school reading contest in fifth grade – I watched as kids who never read copied titles from the classroom library onto their forms and filled up their sheets.  Seeing that, it became obvious to me that the contest wasn’t going to be based on who actually read and what they read, which was supposedly the point.  I was an avid reader, and I went over to the shelves and copied down the titles of books I had read before the contest started – I still remember feeling wrong about the whole scenario.  The kids who didn’t read were cheating, the kids who did read were cheating.  And for what?

I want my kids to be lifelong readers, who want to read and enjoy reading.  I don’t want them to have the on/off pattern that has been demonstrated to be the norm with these kind of contests.  In order to ensure that they challenge themselves in their reading, I have a selection of books that my kids need to read from each day for a certain amount of time.  These are all good books, but they also have more complex sentence structure and vocabulary than they might choose on their own. 

So why do I let my kids participate in the summer reading programs? Because my kids already enjoy reading and they aren’t allowed to change their reading standards just to participate.  My kids have mandatory daily reading time (in addition to the free reading they do on their own), and if they want to write down those books on their library reading lists, that’s fine with me.

Avivah