Education, Inc.

In the mid-1990s, I attended Bishop Francis Allen Elementary School in Brampton, Ontario. Like millions of my peers who went to public school at the time, I have a strong cultural memory of pizza — specifically, free pizza. That’s because, like roughly 14 million American students and countless others in Canada and other countries, I participated in Pizza Hut’s Book It! program.

For my generation, Book It! was a fact of life. Founded in 1984, it offered carbs in exchange for reading. If your classroom was enrolled, your teacher would distribute blue Book It! badges early in the year. Students who met their monthly reading goals earned star stickers: five stars on your badge landed you an award certificate, which you could redeem for a single-topping personal pan pizza. I don’t remember much about what I read in those years, but I do remember sliding into a booth at Pizza Hut and cutting into that doughy corporate largesse.

Like most kids, I knew I could...