Introducing the forced 'encouraged' reading program

There was an informal meeting in the staff room today regarding the decree by the principal that each student in the school must borrow 30 English books from the library and read them all in 10 weeks (end of the first semester). Each student is to borrow one book at a time from the library and then complete a worksheet with questions pertaining to the contents of that book. Upon returning the book to the library and handing in the worksheet, he/she will get another book and so on. Sounds like a pretty good plan, in theory,right?

To track this, the librarian will keep tabs on the number of books each student borrows as well as record each class' numbers and print reports from the principal. I enquired about any consequences if the program isn't followed and everyone just shrugged. "We'll have to encourage them to read some more.'

The meeting didn't involve me and it was conducted in Cantonese so I didn't participate (although I was eavesdropping and understood the whole meeting) but I did bring a few of my concerns up to the English department chair later.

1. The kids are overloaded with homework and other extra curricular responsibilities. Forcing them to read (principal would rather use the word 'encouraging them to read 鼓励学生读书) is not a way to make reading enjoyable.

2. The kids who aren't interested will simply cheat and copy their friend's question sheets. Maybe the kids who are too busy will do this too!

3. Perhaps the biggest flaw in this plan is this: the majority of the kids cannot read!! There is virtually no teaching of phonics in the school. The students try to memorise the words upon sight and recall them when needed. Of course, this doesn't work; when reading, many kids will mistaken 'of' with 'for', 'with' with 'what', etc. An 11 year old, grade six student couldn't read the word 'made' in class today. I know this isn't the case in all schools. Every morning on my train ride to work, I see students of all ages reading English novels, textbooks and sometimes newspapers. Some schools teach English the right way and some don't. I guess this school doesn't do it the right way.

So here's a bright idea: why don't we teach the kids how to read so that they can enjoy reading? Sure it may take awhile to teach phonics, but you know that old Chinese proverb: 'Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.' But that may be too obvious to the principal. He just wants 30 books read in 10 weeks.