Freestyle - Week 1C

My son is in Kindergarten, he is 5 years old and loves to go there everyday. We recently had a meeting with his teacher because he doesn't want learn his letters. He loves everything else about school and never is mean or confrontational about not wanting to do his work, he just sits and looks at what he's suppose to be doing and takes such a long time in doing it that he never gets anything done.
We talked about what we could do to help him and if it was a question of him being ready to learn this material or if it was a matter of motivation. Since he has shown us the ability to learn complex things (the difference between a dump truck and an articulated dump truck, the names of various species of fish and such) we decided it was just because he had no motivation to learn these things. He isn't connecting the need to learn letters with anything that will be worthwhile to him.
This issue is of great importance to me because he is forming opinions about school and learning and work ethic right now and everything he learns is helping to shape his character and his sucess in life. We want him to feel the satisfaction of success! But how do you explain all this to a 5 year old?
I recently bought him a little book with a computer game at Wal-mart that has a bunch of worksheets in it that will help him to learn his letters. He saw it on the counter and asked what it was, I said "It's a book about letters that will help you learn to read, like you are doing in Kindergarten." he followed with "I don't want it, I don't want to buy it", then I told him after a couple more unsatisfied responses "It will teach you to read so you can read how to use a fishing pole and read how to catch a catfish", his immediate and enthusiastic return was "Okay, I want to buy it!"
I think this is more common that not in our society in regards to reading. Not just in those just learning to read but in all ages. Why should I read this book? What am I going to gain from this? How is this concept going to make me more money? Sometimes we can't see the immediate gain from our work but any concept learned, usually from reading to learn it, is going to give us some kind of positive return. We may not see it immediately, it may be so grand we can't even imagine it!
I recommend that even when we cannot see the reward, we should go ahead, accomplish the hard tasks! Like the old saying, Very rarely is something worthwhile easily attained.