Lack of Motivation: What it looks like.

Parents:

• Does your child have a messy room?
• Do you have a hard time getting them to do any work around the house?
• When they do the work is it like pulling teeth to get them to do it?
• Do you have to threaten him or her with punishment?
• Is your child having a hard time in school?
• Are they getting bad grades?

 

Teachers:

• Do you have students who acts out in class?
• Are you having trouble with students doing their class work?
• Homework?
• Do you have students that spend too little time focusing on your lessons and too much time goofing around?
• Are there students in your class that just don’t show up?
• Do students fall asleep in your class?
• Are you having trouble getting through a lesson plan due to behavioral issues?
• Do yo have students that have just checked out?

These are all signs of an unmotivated child.

All too often a child or in this case a student will choose not to participate in the roles that have been chosen for them.  Being a student is a role that has been forced on them by society.  We say that this role is for their own betterment.  Society at large has decided that for our own good, the good of future society, and that of the child that children must go through school.  That is why we have made it compulsory for children in the United States of America to attend primary and secondary school; kids have to go to school its the law.  This is a fact that most high school students today are well aware of and truly resent.

Very few high school students go to school of their own free will, those that do seem to flourish in an academic environment.  For the rest of the student population they are attending until they don’t have to anymore.  High school students are waiting for the moment with white knuckled anticipation when they can graduate and be free.  Some choose to go to college, some join the work force, others join the military, and a few are just lost, floating in a world of stagnation and resentment.  For all of these students if you ask them the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  Some of them will say that they want to go to college, not to learn, but so they can have the job that they dream of and life style that is better than their parents.  I can guarantee that none of them will say that I want to be a perpetual student.  Why would they?  Being student is a role that they have been forced to accept for most of their lives.

 

 

 

Unfortunately some students decide to drop out.  Here are some startling statistics relating to poverty and graduation.  

 

The same can be said of our youth at home.  A child does not get to choose who their parents are or what their home life is like.   In most cases most of the major decisions of their lives are made for them.  They are told where to go, what to do, and what the expectations are of their behavior.  For a child who is lacking motivation the only place that they might have a choice is in school and that choice is all too often not to participate.  Their reasoning is quite simple, they see more value in expressing their only option of freedom of choice, not to participate, than to do so.

To tackle the problem of motivation teachers and parents alike must start to look at student motivation from the child’s point of view.  The child will always be asking the question, “Why do I have to do this?”  What they are really asking is, “What value is this to me?”  It is our job as teachers and educators to come up with the answer.