1/31 Deconstruction
Pottie training my son has been an ongoing "issue" at our house. My son who is 3 has no interest in the pottie training. My husband however feels we are completely out in left field and is wondering how we can MAKE him learn. AH - the striking obvious YOU CAN'T TEACH SOMEONE SOMETHING THEY DON'T WANT TO LEARN. You can give them the tools to learn, and you can try to give them some motivators and show them why it would be good to learn, but they HAVE to WANT to learn before it is even a possiblity. I think kids especially young ones, make this a little more obvious. Adults sometimes "pretend" to learn something they know they should learn but in reality they won't "retain" that knowledge unless they want to.
As I discuss the pottie training problem with friends and other parents, everyone's story is "they will do it when they want to" or you can't make them". What an understanding which can be applied to teaching anything. Although the pottie training example is very tangible and a 3 year old doesn't know how to "pretend" or care to that makes it much more obvious.
The reality is, until my son decides he wants to learn, he won't. The idea of 'false motivators" doesn't work. The only reason to learn to go to the bathroom in a toilet is if you WANT to learn to go. All the "dangling carrots" are really irrelevent. Telling my son he SHOULD know this because he is 3, makes no impact on him whatsoever, and I guess it shouldn't make an impact. Why should he care if 3 is the magic number that society says he should be pottie trained. If he doesn't care if other 3 year old are pottie trained, I can't make him.
Take this and apply it to teaching in general, the false motivators can be grades, parent bribary, college acceptance. As a teacher if I tell a student that all 12 year olds need to know how to multiply fractions, why should they care? Why do we build these false motivators in and make them part of reality. Why can't they just learn when and what they want? Why do we have such a hard time with this?
1 Comments:
Hi Kari,
Interesting commentary on the role of motivation. It is important to figure out what will attract a person to learning. It is best if the motivation is intrinsic, but do you think extrinsic motivations also work? Are there times when the reasons shift? Have you ever agreed to jump over a hoop of one kind or another for the reward and then found that the jumping was fun? The role of external motivators are often to get you to try something that you might not try without them.
We do things for lots of reasons. Take potty training. I suggested a "community of practice" approach where you get the teacher to be someone that the child wants to be "just like" and you get that person to do the convincing on the grounds "you want to be more like me..right? This is one of the things that big kids do." In this case we tie one desire "to be a big kid" with an outcome or practice we want someone to acquire "potty use" and they see that the development is necessary. The reaction to the initial efforts are what helps the child continue.
In some ways this is similar to the M.A. program. YOu want to be like others who have an M. A. That means you have to do things you might not want to do initially but when you accomplish them and others notice your new skills, you too are pleased to see the development in yourself. it is that sense of acoomplishment that drives learning. But does it take some sort of external pressure to do things that are hard for us?
So what sort of rewards (internal or external will get you to develop a more regular blogging habit?
MM.
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