No more minutes

We will not be counting minutes at my house any longer! Last night, I read Alfie Kohn's, "How to create nonreaders" and recognized some of these actions in my daughter's school. Then, before my daughter went to sleep last night, she asked, "can you wake me up 20 minutes early so I can read?" She didn't want to wake up early because she was in the middle of a good book and couldn't wait to see what happened. She wanted to wake up early to read because she didn't think she read enough minutes this week. She read about 175 minutes even though she attended a Girl Scout meeting, dance practice and church class. She doesn't pick up a book "just for fun" anymore (and it's only been 1 month of counting minutes). She picks up a book because she wants to read for more minutes than her classmates. You may believe that reading is reading and as long as she is reading she is improving her reading. This would be an incorrect assumption. Her reason for reading has changed. Reading has become a chore; a school assignment.
I have worked 8 years nurturing her love for reading. So, we are throwing away the minutes record and she will read when she wants to read when she wants to read. We will talk about what she's reading and she will tell me what she wants to read. She read nearly 50 books this past summer and enjoyed all of them. She had no reports, no recording of minutes and no competition. I enjoyed watching her open a book and get lost in the action.

What is the purpose of making kids write down how many minutes they read? Yes, I know. Many kids don't read and if they don't read they don't get better at reading. But, what about those kids that already like to read? We are forcing them to count minutes when all they want to do is read. We are forcing them into a competition of reading "the most minutes". What is more important -- reading for fun or reading for minutes?
Kids cannot be forced into doing something they don't want to do outside of school. Teachers can only control what happens in school. If students are not reading outside of school, teachers need to make sure they read in school.
Once again, the needs of the lowest students take precedence over the needs of the high achieving student. If our education system continues to ignore these high achieving students, they will quit being high achievers. If our country loses these high achievers, we will cease to be a world power.