Cross posted at Faithfully Liberal.
For over 20 years Pizza Hut has sponsored the Book It program. Many may be aware of the program with their own kids participating in it or by reading your own way to free pizza. When I was in elementary school, I was more than eager to pour through dozen of books to get the free coupons. Inevitably my reading would dwindle outside of the program without the incentive, but my passion was still there nonetheless.
Well the program is under attack once again.
Book It, which reaches about 22 million children a year, "epitomizes everything that's wrong with corporate-sponsored programs in school," said Susan Linn, a Harvard psychologist and co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.
"In the name of education, it promotes junk food consumption to a captive audience ... and undermines parents by positioning family visits to Pizza Hut as an integral component of raising literate children," Linn said.
This is a very valid reason to attack the program. It is a danger to our children's eating habits, especially with the intense uptick in childhood obesity in recent years. But the program is incredibly popular.
Dallas-based Pizza Hut says Book It is the nation's largest reading motivation program -- conducted annually in about 925,000 elementary school classrooms from October 1 through March 31. A two-month program is offered for preschoolers.
And there are great rewards to the program... kids ARE reading!
At Strafford Elementary School in Strafford, Missouri, the roughly 500 students collectively read 30,000 books a year with Book It's help, said principal Lucille Cogdill.
Just one of many examples of its positive effects.
There are of course other reasons to be against the program. It puts pressure on parents to go to Pizza Hut, for their kids free personal pan pizza. It creates the need to have incentives for our children to learn. And it is allowing corporate America into our schools, creating a consumer of our kids.
But attacking the program itself is ignoring the larger issue at hand. Our schools are sadly underfunded, many of our teachers are underpaid, schools are falling apart. How do we get our children to learn in these conditions?
With some children incentives work. It is positive reinforcement, but the long term effect is that of creating a child dependent upon being rewarded for their education.
Learning, is namely the reward in of itself but unfortunately it is getting tougher and tougher for many to see it this way.
The bottom line is when it comes to the education of children it not only takes a family, it takes a village. Parents, school districts, state departments and federal Department of Education are all responsible to ensuring the future generation receives the best education possible.
It starts with good environment in which to learn.