Tommy and his Reading Circle Certificate

The second grade class at Auxvasse School, 1958-59,
the year Tommy Dryden (second row, second from left)
finally earned his coveted Reading Circle Certificate.

Parents of students at the Archie R. Cole middle school in tony East Greenwich, RI were stunned to receive a letter last weekend announcing that the school’s annual awards ceremony, an event during which high-achieving students have traditionally received recognition in front of their peers and parents for their hard work, was canceled.

The school’s principal, Alexis Meyer, wrote, “Members of the school community have long expressed concerns relating to the exclusive (my italics) nature of Honors Night.” She went on to say it was decided instead to recognize students during a “team-based” recognition ceremony that will be more inclusive and make everyone feel special. “This will afford us the opportunity to celebrate the individual and collaborative successes of all students and their effort, progress and excellence. Additionally, our Cole Varsity athletes will receive their trophies and medals at an after school ceremony.”

Ms Meyer is probably too busy attending political correctness and inclusiveness seminars at taxpayer expense but, if she can spare the time, here’s a true story I hope she will read.

When I started first grade in tiny (not tony) Auxvasse, Mo., in 1957, I was five years old -- decidedly less mature than my classmates, most of whom had already turned six. I spent more time trying to amuse my fellow pupils than applying myself to the lessons our teacher, Mrs. McCune, was teaching.

The state of Missouri at that time awarded “Reading Circle Certificates” to schoolchildren who read a certain number of books and turned in written reports on them -- ten books in first grade, twelve in the second grade, etc.

Because I was too busy clowning around, I only read nine during the first grade – one short of the number needed to earn a Reading Circle Certificate. At the end-of-the-year assembly, when the names of my classmates who had read the required ten books were announced – the majority of the class if I remember correctly and, believe me, I do – and they were called up on stage to receive their certificates, I was devastated. It was the worst disappointment of my young life.

The next year I made sure I read more than enough books to qualify for a certificate, and went on to earn certificates every school year up to the eighth grade when the program ended. By that time, I was an avid reader, which was, of course, the purpose of the program in the first place.

I continued to read books for fun throughout high school, college, early marriage, parenthood and today, as a new grandpa, I still read an average of two books a week. In the last five days I’ve read “The Party’s Over” by former Florida governor Charlie Crist who whines that he had to leave the GOP, claiming it was hijacked by the extreme right when, in fact, he left because a candidate who better represented the views of mainstream Floridians presented himself when Crist decided to run for Senate and his only possible hope of winning was to run as an Independent. I also read “What Happened to Goldman Sachs: An Insider’s Story of Organizational Drift and its Unintended Consequences,” by a former Goldman employee who details how the world’s largest investment bank came to have no soul but hundreds of billions of dollars.

The week before I read “The Nazi Officer’s Wife,” an obscure autobiography by a Vienna-raised Jewish law student who, during WWII, avoided deportation to a concentration camp and almost certain death by posing as a gentile, and wound up marrying a Nazi officer and having his child. I also read Michael Lewis’ latest best-seller “The Flash Boys," which explains how the big Wall Street banks and hedge funds screw the rest of us by investing in technology that enables them to know, a nano-second before a "buy" trade is placed, how much the buyer is planning to offer so they can scoop up the shares and raise the price.

I tend to prefer non-fiction because, as they say, truth is stranger than. 

All that reading has served me well. The ability to pick up a book (or Kindle) and lose myself in it has seen me through bad times, providing a means of escape from any troubles I might be having, and has made good times, beach vacations in particular, even more pleasurable. I plan to continue reading right up to the day the Grim Reaper comes to take me away. I hope he’ll say OK when I ask if he can wait a minute until I finish the chapter I’m reading.

My love of reading is directly attributable to recognition I didn’t receive as a first grader at an Honors Ceremony not unlike the one that was canceled in Rhode Island. I wish the State of Missouri had awarded certificates to kids who achieved certain physical goals because I’ve never been much of an athlete. I would have made sure I won one every year and – who knows? -- might have been a jock instead of the manager of my high school’s basketball team who got to hand out towels to those who worked harder and were more motivated to succeed in athletic endeavors than I.

Recognition and awards matter  ... especially to kids. Not everyone can earn a varsity letter or a trophy for performing or a scholarship for academic achievement or whatever it is kids set their sights upon these days. But the possibility of earning an award – even one that’s nothing more than a piece of 8.5" x 11" photocopied paper, as the Reading Circle Certificate was – can motivate some children to go for it and, in so doing, can open a new world for them. Not every child who sets a goal of winning an award will earn one. That’s life. The sooner a kid learns that lesson, as I did in first grade, the better. If you want something, you have to work for it. (Unless, of course, you land a job at Goldman Sachs in which case you get millions just for showing up.)

Following unfavorable media stories instigated by outraged parents, the administrators at the Archie Cole school in Rhode Island have now decided to reinstate Honors Night.

Presumably Alexis Meyer will preside but my guess is she’ll resent those who earn awards and her bleeding heart will ache for those who don’t.