How do you get kids to read and study more?

How do you get kids to read? According to the mayor of one Spanish town, you pay them! I came across an article from the globeandmail.com while surfing around the web last night. I couldn’t believe it:

Agustin Jimenez, socialist mayor of the agricultural town of Noblejas in central Spain, is recommending the town’s children be given a euro – the equivalent of about $1.50 – for every hour they spend reading in their local or school library.

I’ll just say this, if I were paid based on the reading I did, I would probably get paid more than what I earn at my current full-time job. You can interpret that as I either read way too much, or I get paid dirt (I’ll let you decide).

Seriously though. In a perfect world kids would read on their own because books are cool and reading is fun. But we don’t live in a perfect world and kids are distracted by everything from video games to television/movies and everything in between (I feel old saying that). In other words, reading isn’t high up on the to-do list for many kids.

Pros

Paying these kids to read isn’t a half-bad solution to what appears to be a problem in Spain:

Spanish students were also some of the worst at reading in Europe, with 21 per cent of 15-year-olds having difficulties, compared with the European Union average of 19.8 per cent.

Look at it this way: even if a majority of the kids read only to get that money, then what’s the worst that can happen (I’ll get to that later). Chances are, if enough kids read enough books, regardless of what motivates them, reading is going to catch on with some of these students. And some of them will read because they discovered they like it, not so much because they’re getting paid.

The article also says that they get paid for studying and doing homework. I imagine if you have all these kids studying to get paid more, they’re bound to learn something and might just do better in school.

Cons

I also see two big problems with this program. The first is quite obvious: some kids will learn to "game" the system and get paid for reading that’s not actually being done. Along the lines of this problem, many see it as a waste of money. Don’t they have better things to spend their money on?

The second potential problem is that you risk setting kids up to think they should be rewarded with money and other material things for stuff they should be doing anyway. It can be viewed as a bad example of proper motivation. Just like some parents argue against giving their young ones an allowance because they shouldn’t need to be paid for helping out around the house.

Conclusion
The money allocated for this program is probably just worked into the education budget anyway. I think it’s probably a better use of funds than a lot of things. I just hope that the system is worked out in a way that prevents abuse. And I hope parents are proactive with their kids and teaching them about being responsible with the money they earn (I do sound old!).

Maybe the United States should adopt a similar program, seeing how this country is seriously lacking in the novel reading department (see Many Americans Don’t Read).

What do you think? Should kids be paid to read, or is this just a massive waste of money?

Read the article Book bribery and decide for yourself!

Related posts

• Young kids read more, study says
• Free books encourage children to read
• Texas school suspends teacher over “inappropriate” book
• Read my guest post on LongShortStories: ‘Resurrecting the Short Story’
• NEA: Fiction reading among adults increases!

Read More: Reading