Why aren't children motivated to read? There are 2 main reasons. First, instead of being driven towards the book, they are forced to drive towards it. The natural curiosity is completely destroyed. If a child's motivation to read a particular text is to get good grades rather than good knowledge, no matter what anyone says, that child will never "learn" anything.
The second reason is that they judge the book by it's cover (pun intended). Because they are always given books for academic purposes (except if the child is whole- heartedly interested in the subject), they automatically assume every book to be textbook style. This does not help in inculcating a good reading habit and as Mr KP Mohanan said, they end up never picking up a good fiction/non-fiction book their entire lives.