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That's possibly fair. I honestly don't know much about motivating kids to learn, and I never saw successful examples growing up. Do you know of any basic theor

by HEmanZ 5y ago

That's possibly fair. I honestly don't know much about motivating kids to learn, and I never saw successful examples growing up. Do you know of any basic theories about it or places I could read more? My problem is that I remember seeing lots of different attempts to motivate students while I was in school (every teacher had a different approach), and I never saw one that worked at all beyond "If you don't do this I will punish you." (bad grades, principles office, some formal punishment system)

serverlessmom 5y ago
Can you imagine if we lived in a world where we gave young people the room to follow their passions instead of being forced to grind the same repetitive material, stealing the joy of learning from them? Not every person needs to be good at everything for a society to flourish, or for that person to be successful, healthy, and productive.
danenania 5y ago
Punishments just make kids (and adults) do the minimum to avoid punishment. They are counter-productive to developing real intrinsic motivation. Motivation issues probably need to be worked out individually with each kid, which to be fair is not really possible for a teacher with 20 students in their class. But fear and punishments are at best just a band-aid for the problem. At worst, they can ruin a kid’s self-image and cause them to give up on school entirely. I’m speaking from my own personal experience mainly, and what I saw happen to friends while growing up.
im3w1l 5y ago
I think a lot of it is just about making it fun. Gamification. Story telling. And tying the learning to stuff they are already interested in. It also helps if the teacher is genuinely passionate about the subject taught. And knows way more than is in the curriculum so he can go on weird tangents and answer curveball questions. Oh and keeping difficulty just right. Not so easy that it is boring, but not so hard that it makes students despair.
crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
I look at things from a needs-based perspective and from the assumption that, barring conditioning to deny meeting needs or even their existence, living creatures innately seek to meet needs to survive and thrive. Learning is a need to for both. The body needs to learn how to breathe, digest, poop, etc. Joy is a need for thriving. It also boosts learning. There's an issue that arises here with common issues around "motivating kids to learn," which is this implies people need to be given some form of incentive to learn, when the truth is the brain is always learning. It may not be learning the content being taught, but it's at least definitely learning from the way the content's being taught. The issue here is that autonomy is a need and modern schooling seems to be focused on dictating to people what to learn. This is a systemic denial of autonomy. As a result, the learning environment is already suboptimal. And if someone already suffers from a chronic denial of autonomy (like, say, in a society that doesn't value empowering children to do what they want and/or in a family that also doesn't, or supports empowerment within a very limited set of constraints, all of which are common situations for most young people in the US), then the system is ensuring learning the curriculum will be severely hindered for those people. People learn faster when they choose their options. Choosing from an arbitrarily constrained list of subjects isn't the same thing. And chronic need denial harms the learning process, so if you want people to learn what they need to survive and thrive, ask them what they want to learn next and help them learn about that thing and tie the exploration back to needs. And if you don't know what the mathematically proven universal human needs are, welcome to the dystopia. We currently don't have such a list and I'm hoping category theorists or constructor theorists develop it soon. In the meantime, there are many different lists online promoting different needs. One that's seemingly been forgotten from many of them is the need for memory, so remember to figure out a process for uncovering hidden needs. I choose to follow suffering to see what the underlying needs are there and seeing if the suffering goes away after meeting those needs. If not, there may be a hidden need at play.

by HEmanZ 5y ago

serverlessmom 5y ago

Can you imagine if we lived in a world where we gave young people the room to follow their passions instead of being forced to grind the same repetitive material, stealing the joy of learning from them? Not every person needs to be good at everything for a society to flourish, or for that person to be successful, healthy, and productive.

danenania 5y ago

Punishments just make kids (and adults) do the minimum to avoid punishment. They are counter-productive to developing real intrinsic motivation. Motivation issues probably need to be worked out individually with each kid, which to be fair is not really possible for a teacher with 20 students in their class. But fear and punishments are at best just a band-aid for the problem. At worst, they can ruin a kid’s self-image and cause them to give up on school entirely. I’m speaking from my own personal experience mainly, and what I saw happen to friends while growing up.

im3w1l 5y ago

I think a lot of it is just about making it fun. Gamification. Story telling. And tying the learning to stuff they are already interested in. It also helps if the teacher is genuinely passionate about the subject taught. And knows way more than is in the curriculum so he can go on weird tangents and answer curveball questions. Oh and keeping difficulty just right. Not so easy that it is boring, but not so hard that it makes students despair.

crawfordcomeaux 5y ago

I look at things from a needs-based perspective and from the assumption that, barring conditioning to deny meeting needs or even their existence, living creatures innately seek to meet needs to survive and thrive. Learning is a need to for both. The body needs to learn how to breathe, digest, poop, etc. Joy is a need for thriving. It also boosts learning. There's an issue that arises here with common issues around "motivating kids to learn," which is this implies people need to be given some form of incentive to learn, when the truth is the brain is always learning. It may not be learning the content being taught, but it's at least definitely learning from the way the content's being taught. The issue here is that autonomy is a need and modern schooling seems to be focused on dictating to people what to learn. This is a systemic denial of autonomy. As a result, the learning environment is already suboptimal. And if someone already suffers from a chronic denial of autonomy (like, say, in a society that doesn't value empowering children to do what they want and/or in a family that also doesn't, or supports empowerment within a very limited set of constraints, all of which are common situations for most young people in the US), then the system is ensuring learning the curriculum will be severely hindered for those people. People learn faster when they choose their options. Choosing from an arbitrarily constrained list of subjects isn't the same thing. And chronic need denial harms the learning process, so if you want people to learn what they need to survive and thrive, ask them what they want to learn next and help them learn about that thing and tie the exploration back to needs. And if you don't know what the mathematically proven universal human needs are, welcome to the dystopia. We currently don't have such a list and I'm hoping category theorists or constructor theorists develop it soon. In the meantime, there are many different lists online promoting different needs. One that's seemingly been forgotten from many of them is the need for memory, so remember to figure out a process for uncovering hidden needs. I choose to follow suffering to see what the underlying needs are there and seeing if the suffering goes away after meeting those needs. If not, there may be a hidden need at play.