Bad Manners and Brimstone

I'm going to try and jettison all extraneous nonsense and go straight to the heart.

A library with seven branches is preparing for summer reading.  In years past, it has been traditional to offer a REALLY good prize at EACH branch to encourage teens to read.  Each time a teen reads a book, they get a chance (up to five chances) to toss their name into a raffle for Something Really Good. 

A year before budget constraints dictated that there was only ONE prize to be raffled off to teens city wide.  Kids at the smaller branches and the urban branches stopped reading because they figured there was no point in trying for the big prize.  Attendance dipped.

This year it was suggested that the programming committee consider returning to the old practice of having Really Wonderful Item as a prize at each branch.  Everyone agreed that this would be an expensive but good idea...then...

Two people insisted, that to be fair, we would offer the seven Wonderful Things as What You Might Win at Each Br7 anch.....BUT...instead of having a drawing for each branch and each branch's teens, all the tickets would be pooled at the end of summer and the winners selected from the pool to "make it more fair".

Why is this more fair?  It's the odds.  By pooling the tickets, we are making the odds fair.  So there is a potential that the 6 kids from tiny branch A in impoverished neighborhood might read and each get the allowed five chances...to win, but they will be up against the 275 kids from bigger Branch B and the 689 kids at the Main Library each of whom also has five chances.  And it is very likely therefore that none of the 6 kids at branch A have a hope in heck of winning anything but disappointment.

"This is much more fair," Coworker A said.  "The six kids from Tiny Impoverished Branch have 5 chances in 35 of winning something, but the kids from MY branch have 5 chances in 2500 of winning and that isn't fair."

Coworker A was asked if it wold be fair when, no doubt, the kids from the biggest library with the most teens and therefore the most chances in the pot all win again and the kids from the tiny branches don't.  She insisted that yes, it was fare as then they would each have just five chances against the rest of the kids.

While the odds argument makes some sense, it just seems like the kids in the crappy neighborhoods are getting ignored again.  Of course, there is a chance that one of them might win, but it's highly unlikely.  And it is very annoying when prizes for other age groups are going to be drawn locally.  Only the teens and adults are getting this kind of treatment.

Fair? Unfair?  QUIT GIVING PRIZES FOR READING YOU YUTZES?  wE ARE ITCHING TO KNOW WHAT OTHERS THINK.

It just depends on what the goal is.

If you pool all the kids, then yes, there is a greater chance that larger branches might have more winners; but every kid in the city has the same chance, no matter which branch they go to.

I know attendance dropped when there was only one prize, but that was based on a fallacious perception--every individual kid absolutely had the same exact chance to win that prize. It's just the branch that had lower odds. And the kids from the smaller branches MAY have thought, "my neighborhood won't win, so that means I won't."

BUT they also may have thought, "there's only one prize for the entire city--everybody's odds are low, and since mine are low, it's not worth my time."

Perhaps the incentive of winning the prize is the only thing that made the kids from those neighborhoods read a book, and the kids from the neighborhoods with high participation would have read those 5 books anyway.

I was going to say that since the goal is to get kids to read, you should go back to the prize structure that worked, and not worry whether the kids at the larger libraries had a lesser chance to win, since you're still getting them into the contest.

But, since there was only one prize, you don't know whether that would have worked.

The cool thing would be to pick the smallest library (let's say Library A=500 kids; Library B=1,000; Library C=2,300) and come up with a Decent Prize that you can do multiples of, and then you have one prize for every 500 kids in each library, rounding off (Library a = 1 prize; Library B=2 prizes; Library C=5 prizes).

Then every kid has a roughly even chance, but the kids in the smaller neighborhoods are less likely to think, "Oh, we're outnumbered by all those wealthier suburban neighborhoods, so I'll never win."

EDITED TO ADD: In order to achieve your goal--to make kids feel like they'll get something good if they read--I think you do need to have a plan that means there IS a winner at every branch. Kids at Library A aren't going to feel all that invested if the winners list doesn't include someone from their branch. But the same could be for Library C.

in the pursuit of "fair," you shouldn't lose sight of the idea that your aim is to get kids to read.

The participation in reading would increase greatly if the teens were competing against themselves rather than each other.  For example, the library system in my city give a pair of tickets to a professional baseball game to each child/teen who reads 20 books over the summer.

Is the goal to be "fair" or is the goal to have the highest possible participation in reading?

Life is already unfair to the 6 kids from tiny impoverished branch's neighborhood.

Maybe more kids from that area would participate if they thought they had a better chance at REALLY GREAT PRIZE.

If there are branches that are disadvantaged, then they need MORE resources, MORE encouragement, not the SAME as areas that are relatively affluent.  Because in those areas,  "same" is actually LESS.

TLDR: I agree with Toots! 

THIS. Let's encourage more teens from this area to read, not squish down any chance they think they've got to win something.

In my library system, any kid/teen signing up for the summer reading program gets two tickets to the local minors baseball team, with three different games they can go to as options. Then there are more prizes that they get automatically as they advance- pass to the local kid's science museum, free books, etc. Then they get entered into a drawing at the end for a Big Prize. This is across the board, so they're basically competing against themselves to do well. It doesn't matter which branch they go to, we can check their stats online and see what prize they're entitled to.

Life isn’t fair.  It can’t possibly be. One child is born healthy, another with bone cancer. There just isn’t anything any government organization can do to make this fair, even if they offer treatment, to be born healthy is the only thing that would make the second child have a fair chance in life.

Really, we need to stop expecting problems to be fixed by others. One of my favourite quotes is from Lily Tomlin “I used to think someone should do something, and then I realized I was someone.”

This is where community comes in. The library or the government won’t support prizes for the kids in the under privileged communities. Fine. The community itself or neighbouring communities need to be approached with, our kids would benefit, and therefore our communities would benefit and therefore our neighbouring communities would benefit from donations to this reading encouragement program.

Go out there and ask for donations, start a go fund me for that particular library. Think outside the box because fair never has and never will be.

I don't know that one is more fair than the other. I also don't see the value in finding "fair" when the end goal is to encourage the most number of kids to read. I would probably go with the scenario that I thought would do that (even if it did not feel fair to some kids). It might mean some trial and error to figure out what system does the most good.

I have to agree with Toots, that the goal is to get kids in the habit of reading.  I suppose giving all the children an equal chance to win a prize might be the most "fair," but I think the kids at the local library need to be competing against each other.  Centralizing the prize makes it seem too distant and unattainable.

However, Contrarian has me thinking...  If you did solicit donations to award prizes at your local branch, #1, would that be allowed?  and  #2, would your branch be allowed to keep them and distribute them to your library's kids or would you have to share with the other branches?  Would it be possible to collect enough to have smaller prizes awarded to kids who've read a certain number of books and still allow them to participate in a city-wide drawing for the big prizes?

I would start protests if library A offered prizes paid for by the library system but library B needs those same prizes to be paid for by the community. If all of the libraries are connected (which is sounds like) why is A getting more benefits then B? Shouldn't the funds be distributed to every library? Plus if B is in a more disadvantaged area then A (which is sounds like) then they probably have less money to donate then B. Which makes it even more unfair. I bet a smart politician could get very far on campaigning how the advantaged A are taking from disadvantaged B in this scenario.

I agree that if the goal is to encourage reading then having a moderate price per branch and a city wide grand prize would be the best option.