Pizza and Stick

Back in the day, they called it the carrot and stick approach: holding an incentive out infront of someone to get them to do something. During my childhood, that carrot was replaced by pizza, a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut to be exact courtesy of the "Book It" program. I had almost compeltely forgotten about it until this headline caught my attention this week: Critics Denounce Pizza Hut Reading Program.

Now being a person who cares deeply about education issues and who wishes that she ate better in her formative years (and perhaps now too), I understand some of the concerns. But really people, is this the battle you want to pick? Is this actually the problem? Here are some of their arguments:

"It promotes junk food consumption to a captive audience": Yes, you're giving a kid one pan pizza, but have you seen everything else that kids eat? Kids gourge on sugary cereals for breakfast, eat chips and soda for lunch, babysit themselves with junkfood infront of the tv afterschool, and have fast food for dinner. "Book It" isn't providing the gateway drug into pizza and junkfood, kids are already there. You have it everyday in the school cafeteria and on the weekends at birthday parties.

And somehow, people concerned with childhood obesity and grownup weight loss seem to forget about the exercise component. Let's target the fact that schools are getting rid of recess so they can teach for the "No Child Left Behind" tests and that afterschool activities and gym are being cut because schools have no more money.

Although this program may not be helping fight childhood obesity, I severly doubt that this will have the domino effect that critics think it will. I know that this is a huge problem to fight, but targeting the program that also promotes reading shouldn't be on the first line of attack.

"Epitomizes everything that's wrong with corporate-sponsored programs in school": Eh. I don't like corporations taking over schools (I went to a pepsi high school and college), but once again I think people are just picking at an easy target. I don't think corporations are saints, but parents shouldn't act like they are either. Moreover, after going through the "Book It" program and going to pepsi schools, I don't regularly (or even occassionally) consume pizza or soda. So much for the brainwashing.

"The more kids see books as a way to get pizza or some other prize, the less interest they'll have in reading itself": Maybe it's just my pragmatic side but I'm all about incentives. It's all nice and idealistic to think that we all do everything for pure motives and we don't need rewards. But that's not realistic at all. I love to read, and I love learning, but even I need things to push myself (tonight I got to watch tv if I finished my paper by 10pm). That's me the book worm who voluntarily has committed herself to more years of schooling than most sane people, imagine kids who aren't like me? There's so much focus on kids who are obsese, but are we forgetting how many kids also can't read?

One personal pizza is not going to make a child obsese, but getting them to read a few books for a pizza can spark a love of reading. One critic said kids would just pick easy books to read but I don't think he's giving kids enough credit. From my own personal experience as a kid and tutoring a lot of kids with different backgrounds than me, kids pick books that look interesting. I don't even know how kids would pick books that are easy to get through, big font?

A lot of people say that you shouldn't reward people for doing what they're already supposed to do. But 1) a lot of people need a push to do what they're supposed to do (learn to read) and 2) a lot of people need a push to prioritize certain things. A lot of us view community service as a good thing, but sometimes we need a push. A few mandatory community service hours can foster a real love of service or passion for an issue. It might not sound plausible, but I've seen it happen.

Sure pizza isn't the best prize, but taking it away is at best like putting a band-aid on a much larger wound of child hood obsesity. And potentially making the even bigger wound of illiteracy worse.