Bribing Children

LISNews links to this post by a homeschooling parent in Seattle who spurns summer reading programs.

She argues that offering children prizes for reading a lot of books undermines what should be the real reason they read books--you know, 'cause books are awesome.

I have recently been thinking about rewarding behavior that ideally is its own reward, and I was a homeschooled child who once participated in a summer reading program, so I could naught but comment.

To the internet! Is what I said, before showing up here.

When I was 11, I thought the summer reading program at the library was the best thing ever. I read books all the time anyway, and now I could get a coupon to Dairy Queen for it? Sweet!

So in retrospect the program did not actually motivate me. I don't think I read any more than I would have without it, which was already about twice as much as was required for that free ice cream cone or whatever.

I guess I do get the whole "bribery is icky" aspect of trying to convince some child who normally wouldn't be reading all the time to read for ice cream, though. I mean, doesn't that kind of cheapen the whole thing? If you're only reading because you want ice cream, are you really getting everything you could out of it?

At the same time, this assumes that reading and learning are only ever to be properly valued as abstract jewels free from that taint of filthy lucre. And certainly they are valuable in that sense. If you like to read and learn stuff, I think you're more likely to have a sort of lively, thoughtful mind that will make you good at getting stuff out of life.

But reading and learning stuff can also be put to the service of making money and earning a living, and we can't really argue that that's a waste of time. Maybe it doesn't really matter if kids read for the love of reading or for the love of ice cream. Or money. They're going to wind up doing a lot of boring stuff for money later on, right? Get 'em in the habit!

Besides, maybe they start reading some boring book for ice cream, and then discover that it's actually fascinating and cool!

Bribery: is it really so wrong?

Yeah, I'm working on a parenting book right now that will lay out my theories on child rearing in more detail.