Why we Shouldn't have to Motivate our Children to Learn

Often in India, when young elephants are born into captivity they are chained to trees to avoid them wandering off into plantations and danger. Like us they are born active and intensively curious. As they grow older the chain remains but there is little point in attaching it to anything as they could easily get free and escape if they wanted to. The interesting thing is that even though they could go off they don’t. They are under the control of the system and have become accustomed to it.

Daniel Pink points out that the way we look to motivate our children doesn't actually work most of the time. Carrots and sticks have their limitations. Motivation at its best and most innovative is intrinsic. Rather like the elephants we frame our children’s educational experiences in such a way that reveals a fear of giving them this autonomy when the way we do it might actually be responsible for their loss of engagement and curiosity.

Research shows that having autonomy improves well-being and can have a powerful effect on individual performance and attitude.

I share this fear to some degree. Just seeing how so many teenagers take uncalculated risks is enough to make most parents hold their breath.

Seth Godin had this to say about autonomy:

“As an entrepreneur, I’m blessed with 100% autonomy over task, time, technique and team. If I maintain that autonomy, I fail. I fail to ship. I fail to excel. I fail to focus. I inevitably end up either with no product or a product the market rejects. The art of the art is picking your limits. That’s the autonomy I most cherish. The freedom to pick my boundaries.”

So perhaps the answer is not to inadvertently restrict how young people engage in the world. This produces mediocrity of the worst kind. Instead how can we help them manage, recognise and pick their own boundaries and become our next raft of innovators?

John Hassall, Founder and Creative Director

2 comments:

Unknown28 November 2015 at 23:16
Is it not most important that a learner leaves education (school) with a 'sense of self' ? Gardner alludes to emotional intelligence when he talks of a sense of self and I feel that if we do not give learners autonomy there is little chance that they will be able to develop a sense of self and consequently evolve as emotionally intelligent beings. Filling the vessel (the learner) with facts, figures and information is simply not good enough . Information is little more than disembodied words if it is not embedded through the filter of self knowledge. People may say that emotionally a school age child is by default emotionally immature, is this not undermining the very fabric of childhood development thus creating emotional immaturity? A learner can, in my opinion, only exercise the freedom to pick their own boundaries when they feel connected to their emotions and have a 'sense of self' As educators it is not our place to impart our knowledge, content to fill the vessel, surely it is more important that we are curious about the learners curiosity.
John Hassall1 December 2015 at 09:20
Thanks Jane

I agree. I am a strong believer that education should "liberate not debilitate". It's one of the principle aims of Johass and this blog in particular to explore this from a number of angles. I am hoping to present some really good articles in the next few months so I look forward to your feedback!