7 ms·

One of the ironies here is that it's actually much easier for the smartest kids to excel in school if they have a healthy level of disrespect for it. Intrinsic

by ef4 13y ago

One of the ironies here is that it's actually much easier for the smartest kids to excel in school if they have a healthy level of disrespect for it. Intrinsic motivation is the dominant factor. A student that's actually driven by curiosity and a desire to master everything he or she can is tens or hundreds of times more effective than someone acting out of extrinsic motivation -- the carrots and sticks of grades and punishments. It is so much easier to learn this way that the other kids who are just slogging it out seem to be moving in slow motion. Staying far enough ahead of them to get good grades takes very little effort when you've actually internalized that learning is something you do for fun. The real trick of course is igniting the desire in the first place. Which has been obvious for at least two millennia: "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited." - Plutarch

tokenadult 13y ago
Good on you for attributing the saying to Plutarch. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/28/mind-fire/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/28/mind-fire/ Yes, to your substantive point, learning is easy (comparatively) when the motivation is intrinsic. Trying to preserve intrinsic motivation in my four children is why I keep slogging along in homeschooling. I had no competitive sports involvement in my youth, nor did my wife, but we've encouraged our children all to be involved in our local soccer club, and I LOVE that they have had early experience in shrugging off defeats and continuing to improve their skills on the field. One loss (or even a bunch of losses) does not end a playing career.
- ef4 13y ago
  I have been building up a quote file for many years. :-) And I'm a homeschooling parent too, though my son is still quite young and we will play it by ear. For me, it was Scouting more than sports that gave me something meaningful to succeed and fail at. There are many good ways beyond classrooms.
psbp 13y ago
The smartest kids I knew were those with very intellectual, but hands off, parents. I always thought it was misguided to advice parents to demand homework be done at a certain time or enforce certain metrics (test scores, volunteer hours, etc), rather than just having intelligent conversations about, well, anything!
- mbell 13y ago
  > The smartest kids I knew were those with very intellectual, but hands off, parents. Parents are one part of it, but teachers are another. I grew up in a very rural but fairly rich community, not because the people were rich (quite the opposite actually), rather because there was a nuclear power plant in town that paid 98% of the towns taxes. I don't remember the exact prompt but I do recall writing a paper for 10th grade english class about quarks. My english teacher went and talked to one of our science teachers because she thought I made up the entire thing, she didn't think quarks were real. That in itself is fine, this was 1998, I doubt many english teachers would be aware of them. What bothers me is that I'm fairly sure that the only reason my paper wasn't just thrown out was that we were lucky enough to get a science teacher who was an ex-Harvard associated researcher whom moved 'out to the sticks' for family reasons. It was this chap that my english professor asked, thankfully, since I'm relatively certain that no one else in the school, let alone the rest of the science department, would have had a clue. Without that stroke of luck I'd have probably been given an F and not even considered writing outside the box papers again, or at least delayed writing another one. Side note, but this random teacher I had was amazing, he really changed a lot of the way I look at things. From his profession (biology), to thinking entrepreneurial, to learning the basics of the stock market when I was 14...I learned a lot from that guy. All because we were just lucky enough to have someone of his caliber there to glean knowledge from. It's amazing what a single teacher can do to change someone very early in their life.
  - ef4 13y ago
    Quarks were proposed in 1964 and observed in the lab pretty unequivocally by 1977. By 1998 they weren't some weird new theory. Which is to say, your (depressingly typical) English teacher shouldn't be given the benefit of the doubt on this. She probably had a dictionary sitting in her classroom that could have told her what "quark" means and that they come in six flavors. But she didn't even think to reach for it. Nevermind actually going to the library like she probably orders her students to do. Nobody can be faulted for not knowing everything, but not even trying to learn is unforgivable in an alleged teacher.
vacri 13y ago
Different people have different motivations. There is no One True Way to educate any sizeable demographic. Pointing at an autodidact and saying "see how much she learns when she's left alone" (or whatever) doesn't tell you anything about how to educate those who are not autodidacts.
- ef4 13y ago
  I think you just eloquently argued for abolishing one-size-fits-all mass schooling, which I would wholeheartedly support.
smartistone 13y ago
you are so smart to use extrinsic in a sentence. please continue to regale me with your knowledge

by ef4 13y ago

tokenadult 13y ago

Good on you for attributing the saying to Plutarch. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/28/mind-fire/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/28/mind-fire/ Yes, to your substantive point, learning is easy (comparatively) when the motivation is intrinsic. Trying to preserve intrinsic motivation in my four children is why I keep slogging along in homeschooling. I had no competitive sports involvement in my youth, nor did my wife, but we've encouraged our children all to be involved in our local soccer club, and I LOVE that they have had early experience in shrugging off defeats and continuing to improve their skills on the field. One loss (or even a bunch of losses) does not end a playing career.

ef4 13y ago
I have been building up a quote file for many years. :-) And I'm a homeschooling parent too, though my son is still quite young and we will play it by ear. For me, it was Scouting more than sports that gave me something meaningful to succeed and fail at. There are many good ways beyond classrooms.

psbp 13y ago

The smartest kids I knew were those with very intellectual, but hands off, parents. I always thought it was misguided to advice parents to demand homework be done at a certain time or enforce certain metrics (test scores, volunteer hours, etc), rather than just having intelligent conversations about, well, anything!

mbell 13y ago
> The smartest kids I knew were those with very intellectual, but hands off, parents. Parents are one part of it, but teachers are another. I grew up in a very rural but fairly rich community, not because the people were rich (quite the opposite actually), rather because there was a nuclear power plant in town that paid 98% of the towns taxes. I don't remember the exact prompt but I do recall writing a paper for 10th grade english class about quarks. My english teacher went and talked to one of our science teachers because she thought I made up the entire thing, she didn't think quarks were real. That in itself is fine, this was 1998, I doubt many english teachers would be aware of them. What bothers me is that I'm fairly sure that the only reason my paper wasn't just thrown out was that we were lucky enough to get a science teacher who was an ex-Harvard associated researcher whom moved 'out to the sticks' for family reasons. It was this chap that my english professor asked, thankfully, since I'm relatively certain that no one else in the school, let alone the rest of the science department, would have had a clue. Without that stroke of luck I'd have probably been given an F and not even considered writing outside the box papers again, or at least delayed writing another one. Side note, but this random teacher I had was amazing, he really changed a lot of the way I look at things. From his profession (biology), to thinking entrepreneurial, to learning the basics of the stock market when I was 14...I learned a lot from that guy. All because we were just lucky enough to have someone of his caliber there to glean knowledge from. It's amazing what a single teacher can do to change someone very early in their life.
- ef4 13y ago
  Quarks were proposed in 1964 and observed in the lab pretty unequivocally by 1977. By 1998 they weren't some weird new theory. Which is to say, your (depressingly typical) English teacher shouldn't be given the benefit of the doubt on this. She probably had a dictionary sitting in her classroom that could have told her what "quark" means and that they come in six flavors. But she didn't even think to reach for it. Nevermind actually going to the library like she probably orders her students to do. Nobody can be faulted for not knowing everything, but not even trying to learn is unforgivable in an alleged teacher.

vacri 13y ago

Different people have different motivations. There is no One True Way to educate any sizeable demographic. Pointing at an autodidact and saying "see how much she learns when she's left alone" (or whatever) doesn't tell you anything about how to educate those who are not autodidacts.

ef4 13y ago
I think you just eloquently argued for abolishing one-size-fits-all mass schooling, which I would wholeheartedly support.

smartistone 13y ago

you are so smart to use extrinsic in a sentence. please continue to regale me with your knowledge