I recently ranted on LinkedIn about my youngest child’s school using attendance awards to encourage children to achieve 100% attendance. You can read that if you want my views on that particular bit of educational nonsense, but this rant is not about attendance.
This is about reading.
More specifically, it is about how a well-intentioned reward system managed to take something joyful, meaningful and personal, and turn it into a badge-chasing exercise.
When Reading Became a Quest
My youngest used to be an avid reader. Properly enthusiastic. The sort of child who would disappear into books because she wanted to, not because someone had built a laminated progress chart and started handing out shiny things.
Then, recently, she told me a heartbreaking story about why she does not read much anymore.
Her primary school had a reading reward system built around multiple levels: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Each level had a specific set of books pupils had to read before they could move on to the next. As the levels increased, the books became more difficult and, in some cases, more weapons-grade boring.
When pupils completed a level, they were given a pin badge they could wear on their school cardigan. A visible symbol of achievement. A little marker of progress. Something that, to many of the children, genuinely meant something.
The Race to Platinum
Hannah was on track to be the first pupil to reach platinum.
Then another student got there first.
Hannah was upset, of course. But she accepted it. The other student had worked hard, apparently, and had earned the badge. That was disappointing, but fair.
After Hannah reached platinum herself, she spoke to the other student, probably expecting to share war stories about how dull some of the gold-level books had been.
That was when the whole system came crashing down.
The other student admitted she had not read the books at all.
She had simply checked them out of the library, kept them for a day or two, then checked them back in. No reading. No effort. No understanding. Just enough activity to make the system believe progress had happened.
She wanted the platinum badge.
And she got it.
When the Badge Became a Lie
Hannah was destroyed.
She had read every word of every book, no matter how dull, difficult or joyless some of them had been. She had done what the system asked of her. She had played fairly. She had treated the badge as a symbol of achievement.
Then she discovered that the badge did not really prove achievement at all.
It proved that someone had worked out how to satisfy the system.
That is the real heartbreak here. This was not just about cheating. It was about trust. The badge was meant to represent effort, progress and mastery. But when the system allowed someone to earn it without doing the thing it claimed to recognise, the badge stopped being a reward and became a lie.
After that, Hannah lost interest in reading for pleasure.
The Overjustification Effect in Glorious Action
The school-sponsored quest for platinum had quietly replaced the joy of reading. Then, when the quest itself was revealed to be meaningless, the whole thing collapsed.
That is the overjustification effect in glorious, depressing action. The external reward had overtaken the intrinsic joy of the activity. Reading stopped being something to enjoy and became something to complete. Something to endure. Something to optimise.
And once the badge became the point, the books became obstacles.
Goodhart’s Law Goes to School
This is also a perfect example of Goodhart’s Law:
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
The school wanted to encourage reading. So it measured books completed. Then books completed became the target. And once that happened, the system no longer measured reading, understanding, curiosity or enjoyment.
It measured book movement.
Out of the library. Back into the library. Badge please.
Brilliant. We gamified literacy and accidentally invented a logistics problem.
The Problem with Rewarding the Wrong Thing
There are several lessons here.
The first is about the unintended consequences of reward systems designed to encourage behaviour.
The intentions were probably good. Offer rewards, encourage children to read more, scaffold their progress and help them find confidence. That is not a terrible starting point. Rewards can help. Badges can be meaningful. Progression can motivate.
But only when they support the activity rather than replace it.
Autonomy Matters
For a reading system to work, there has to be autonomy. Instead of saying, “Read all of these books and get a badge,” it should be closer to, “Choose books from this level that interest you, read them, and show us what you discovered.”
That small shift matters.
It gives children some control. It lets them find books they might actually enjoy. It allows the reward to act as encouragement when the going gets tough, rather than becoming the entire reason for going.
In RAMP terms, the system stripped away Autonomy by prescribing the books, distorted Mastery by measuring completion rather than comprehension, and damaged Purpose by making reading serve the badge rather than the child.
Because apparently, one framework still was not enough.
Quantity Is Not Quality
The second issue is that the system rewarded quantity over quality.
Without meaningful checks, conversations or reflection, the system had no real way of knowing whether the children had read the books, understood them, enjoyed them, hated them or simply carried them around like literary contraband.
It rewarded the appearance of progress.
Worse, it was easy to game. The fact that one child could reach platinum by checking books in and out without any validation showed that the design was broken.
Children Learn What Systems Really Reward
And here is the uncomfortable bit: children are very good at learning what systems actually reward.
Not what adults say they reward.
What they actually reward.
If the system rewards reading, some children will read.
If the system rewards looking like they have read, some children will learn to look like they have read.
That is not a moral failure of children. That is a design failure by adults.
Rewards Should Support, Not Replace
Gamified systems that rely on rewards have to be designed with real care. Rewards can guide, encourage and celebrate, but they can also narrow attention, reduce autonomy and encourage people to chase the signal instead of the substance.
A badge should never be the goal.
A badge should be a receipt for meaning.
If a child reads a book, understands it, talks about it, wrestles with it, loves it, hates it honestly, or connects it to something in their life, then recognise that progress. Celebrate it. Give them the badge if you must.
But make sure the badge represents something real.
Because the moment the reward becomes more important than the activity, the system has failed.
It has stopped supporting literacy and started training children to optimise the scoreboard.
And children, as ever, were paying more attention than the adults realised.
Similar Posts:
- 4 Ways Extrinsic rewards bit me in the ass
- Gamification to encourage my daughter to read more
- What’s the difference between Intrinsic Motivation and Extrinsic Rewards
Also published on Medium.