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      Is Paying Kids to Read a Wise Strategy?

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      More from our inbox:Trump and the Psychiatrists: Is He Unfit to Serve?The Folly of a Second DebateA Heartwarming Story of Immigrants in the Heartland Tara BoothTo the Editor:Re “To Persuade a Reluctant Tween to Read, Try Cash,” by Mireille Silcoff (Opinion guest essay, Sept. 8):While I appreciate Ms. Silcoff’s desire to have her daughter experience the joys of reading, I seriously doubt that paying her daughter to read “worked.” While the monetary reward persuaded her daughter to read the book in the short term, it was unlikely to facilitate the motivation to read, which must feel like a choice and unpressured.Decades of research have shown that paying people to do things they love undermines their subsequent motivation, and paying them to complete tasks they do not enjoy keeps the motivation tied to rewards so that they are less likely to value the activity and choose to engage in it on their own.The belief in rewards as an effective motivator is a myth; other strategies are more likely to facilitate long-term motivation. Rewards are a simple fix that is likely to backfire.Wendy S. GrolnickLongmeadow, Mass.The writer is professor emeritus of psychology at Clark University and co-author of “Motivation Myth Busters: Science-Based Strategies to Boost Motivation in Yourself and Others.”To the Editor:I loved this guest essay because that’s precisely what I did 20 years ago when my husband and I traveled for our yearly two-week vacation to the beach with my daughter, two nephews and three other children who often vacationed with us.I offered each child a new book of their choice and $20 if they finished it before the trip was over. All of the kids got the $20 to use during two hours on their own at souvenir shops, and this reading challenge became a standard of our summer vacations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fear Spreads in Beirut as Israel Steps Up Strikes

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      Parents raced to pick up their children from school in Beirut on Monday, as fear spread in the Lebanese capital that Israel might soon strike the city.Amid warnings from Israel that it was intensifying strikes against the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and calls for residents to evacuate, Lebanon’s Education Ministry ordered the closing of some public and private schools, citing “security and military situations” that could endanger students.The street outside one school in east Beirut on Monday morning was clogged with traffic. Dozens of secondary school students in light-blue polo shirts stood waiting to be picked up, while other students rushed out of the building, gripping their parents’ hands.Joaelle Naser, 44, had come to pick up her three daughters, aged 6, 8 and 16. “I am scared, I’m scared,” Ms. Naser said alongside her two youngest, their neat ponytails held in place with fuzzy rainbow-colored scrunchies. “I’m not prepared for if something happens.”Maria Karen, 15, was in math class when she noticed parents walking through the halls with their children. When class ended, she said, the teacher told her and her classmates to pack their things, take their phones and go home.“I’m a little nervous, a lot of my friends are scared,” Maria said as she waited for her parents to come get her at the entrance to the school.One of her close friends lives near Dahiya, a Hezbollah-dominated neighborhood that was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Friday. Lebanese officials have said that at least 45 people were killed in the strike. Maria said that her friend, like many, feared that Dahiya might soon be hit again.The honking horns and bustle around the school stood in stark contrast to the scenes at cafes and shops in the neighborhood.At one large coffee shop, a handful of employees sat idly under the shade of a large awning, surrounded by mostly empty chairs. The cafe would typically be packed around this time but “people are scared,” said one employee, Aya Alemel, 32.Daher Amdi, 34, sitting across from her, agreed.“Nobody will come to the cafes now,” he said, taking a drag from his cigarette. “It’s a war.” More

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      Newsom Signs Bill That Adds Protections for Children on Social Media

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      The California legislation comes amid growing concerns about the impact of cellphones and social media on adolescents’ mental health.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed legislation on Friday aimed at protecting minors from social media addiction amid growing concerns about the impact of technology on adolescents’ mental health.The law, which will go into effect in 2027, effectively requires tech companies to make posts on feeds of minors’ social media accounts appear in chronological order as a default, rather than allowing algorithms to curate them to maximize engagement.The bill also prohibits companies from sending notifications to people under 18 during school hours, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, and during sleep hours, between midnight and 6 a.m. The default settings can be changed with the consent of a parent or guardian.“Every parent knows the harm social media addiction can inflict on their children — isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night,” Mr. Newsom, who has four school-age children, said in a statement on Friday.The move, targeting powerful tech interests in the nation’s most populous state, is part of a nationwide effort to address concern over cellphone and social media use among adolescents. Amid reports of cyberbullying and distraction in classrooms, at least eight states, including Florida and Indiana, have already enacted restrictions on the use of cellphones in school settings. New York put in place a similar law aimed at social media addiction this year.In June, Governor Newsom also called for a ban on smartphone use in all public schools in California. Legislation now before him includes a requirement that the schools devise a policy by July 1, 2026, to limit or prohibit smartphones during the school day, though most school districts already have cellphone policies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Social Studies Teachers Rely on Online and Sometimes Ideological Sources

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      A survey of social studies teachers found that many find primary sources online for lesson plans. But a notable minority also rely on left-leaning materials, and a handful have turned to conservative options.As printed textbooks increasingly gather dust in classroom bookshelves, a new and expansive survey published on Thursday finds that social studies teachers are turning to digital sources and primary documents from the nation’s past.While the most popular curriculum providers are not ideologically skewed, the report warned about a trend of “moralistic cues” in some left-leaning school districts, with lessons that seemed to direct students toward viewing American history emotionally, as a string of injustices.In conservative areas, the report said laws restricting the teaching of “divisive concepts” had been “extremely corrosive of teacher morale and detrimental to the integrity of good history teaching.”Still, the report, from the American Historical Association, found that history teachers overwhelmingly affirmed the goals of presenting “multiple sides of every story” and depicting U.S. history as “a complex mix of accomplishments and setbacks.”The survey paints an unusually detailed portrait of how the nation’s history is being taught during an era of intense political polarization. It reached 3,000 middle and high school teachers across nine states: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington.Nicholas Kryczka, a research coordinator at the American Historical Association and an author of the report, said that overall, the survey suggests that most educators understand the need to exercise self-restraint on political issues.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NYC School Workers’ Families Took Disney Trip Meant for Homeless Students

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      New York City school employees took their children or grandchildren to Disney World and other places through a program intended for homeless students, investigators found.A half-dozen New York City school system employees took their children or grandchildren to Disney World, New Orleans and other destinations by exploiting a program intended for homeless students, investigators said in a report released this month.The trips were meant as “enrichment opportunities,” attendance incentives and rewards for academic achievement for students living in shelters and other temporary housing, according to the report by the special commissioner of investigation for the city’s public schools.The abuse of the grant-funded program was led by Linda Wilson, who at the time was the Queens manager for the Department of Education office that supports homeless students, the report says. As many as one in nine of the city’s roughly one million public school students are homeless.Ms. Wilson, who supervised about 20 employees, took her daughters on some of the trips and encouraged several workers she supervised to do so as well but to keep the activities secret, the report says.“What happens here stays with us,” she told one employee, according to the report.Ms. Wilson and others forged the signatures of homeless students’ parents as part of the scheme, and she used a nonprofit organization to arrange the trips to evade Department of Education oversight, the report says.“Few of the homeless students listed on the trip paperwork actually attended the trips,” the report says, although at least in the case of the Disney World trip, some homeless students did attend. One person interviewed by investigators told them “he had to beg” Ms. Wilson to allow him to add two of his students to the trip, the report says.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ohio Governor Sending State Police to Springfield After Rash of Bomb Scares

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      After Donald J. Trump spread a debunked rumor about the city’s Haitian immigrants, schools have endured dozen of bomb threats.Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio announced on Monday that he was deploying state troopers to the beleaguered city of Springfield to reassure the community that schools are safe despite a wave of bomb threats.The threats began last week after Donald J. Trump mentioned Springfield during the presidential debate, repeating a baseless rumor that Haitian immigrants in the city were abducting and eating household pets.Since then, 33 bomb threats have targeted city schools, most recently on Monday when two elementary schools were evacuated as a result of threats, Governor DeWine said. City Hall and two hospitals have also been targeted.At a news conference, Mr. DeWine said that none of the bomb threats so far had “any validity at all.”But the threats have shaken the city and disrupted school for thousands of students. The deployment of a contingent of 36 troopers, beginning on Tuesday, is intended to allay anxieties and ensure that students can focus on school.“We must take every threat seriously, but children deserve to be in school, and parents deserve to know that their kids are safe,” the governor said. “The added security will help ease some of the fears caused by these hoaxes.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Held Involuntarily in a Psychiatric Hospital

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      More from our inbox:The Debate Over Taxing TipsNonpartisan ElectionsSitting Still in SchoolAcadia Healthcare’s Park Royal hospital in Fort Myers, Fla., and Florida is among those that wrongly held some patients against their will.Michael Adno for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Patients Held Against Will by Hospitals” (front page, Sept. 2):Thank you for your hard-hitting exposé of Acadia Healthcare, a chain of psychiatric hospitals, which revealed Acadia’s corrupt financial practices. The authors report on the toxic effects — including but not limited to driving people away from treatment — of these unscrupulous procedures.But even when hospitals have pure motives, inpatient psychiatric care — especially when it is involuntary — can be traumatizing, and may lead to an increased risk of suicide: In one meta-analysis, “the postdischarge suicide rate was approximately 100 times the global suicide rate during the first 3 months after discharge.”The key to helping people is funding community-based, evidence-based programs. For example, “Peer-run respites provide a voluntary alternative to an emergency department visit or inpatient hospitalization for people experiencing a psychiatric crisis,” as was noted in a recent article in Psychiatry Online.With so much evidence to support the benefits of community-based mental health care, I believe that a paradigm shift in the mental health system — away from hospitalization and toward community-based treatment, including peer support — is long overdue.Susan RogersCherry Hill, N.J.The writer is the director of the National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse.To the Editor:The motivation for this atrocious behavior is cited in the first paragraph of the article, where it is noted that Acadia Healthcare’s stock price has more than doubled. This is an example of the perverse results of the use of private equity to finance health care. There are other such examples.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      San Diego School Superintendent Is Fired After Misconduct Investigation

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      Lamont Jackson, who led California’s second-largest school district, engaged in “unwelcome, sex-based behavior” toward two female employees, the investigation found.The superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District was fired on Friday after an investigation had found that he had acted inappropriately toward two female employees, district officials said.Lamont Jackson, who had overseen California’s second-largest school district since 2021, engaged in “unwelcome, sex-based behavior” with two former district management employees, an outside investigation commissioned by the district found. The termination took effect immediately, and the deputy superintendent, Fabiola Bagula, stepped in to lead the district, which has about 115,000 students.Dr. Jackson, 54, could not immediately be reached for comment.Dr. Jackson, who worked for San Diego Unified for more than three decades, became interim superintendent in 2021 after the district’s former head, Cindy Marten, was appointed as U.S. deputy secretary of education by President Biden. The following year, the school board unanimously voted to award Dr. Jackson a four-year contract in the role. In a statement at the time, the board said that Dr. Jackson, a San Diego native, had brought “the experience and leadership skills to the district that our students, staff and community deserve.” The San Diego Union-Tribune also reported that year that principals praised him for how much he cares about his students and staff members.The allegations against Dr. Jackson came to light this past April, and the school district hired the Los Angeles-based law firm Sanchez & Amador to look into them. The two employees, who were not named, were fired in 2023, in what they believed was retaliation for rebuffing Dr. Jackson’s advances.The four-month investigation confirmed that Dr. Jackson had engaged in sexual behavior toward the women but did not find that they were terminated for turning him down, according to documents shared with The Times. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More