I totally remember participating in the Pizza Hut reading program when I was a kid too!
While I do not remember exactly how winners were chosen or the class divided, I remember that pizza in Panama City, Florida that I earned by reading.
The whole thing is a little ingenious, if you think about it.
For very little money, and in the spirit of friendly competition, a school can take their reading rate from zero to the moon.
It almost sounds like an economist thought it up.
Maybe it worked on me?
I do not remember if I really became a reader before or after that program, but here I am blogging about books, 30 years later.
When I was in elementary school, Pizza Hut—that great, greasy philanthropist—joined forces with Siebert Elementary, my alma mater, to bribe students . . . Hut The setup was simple. The school would hold a Pizza Hut–sponsored contest for students in each grade. Within in each grade, teachers divided us into groups of kids at similar reading levels. Whoever in each group could demonstrate that he had read the most pages over the course of the year won a free, Pizza Hut “personal-pan pizza.”
-Peter Leeson, WTF?! An Economic Tour Of The Weird