nature vs. nature
It was interesting to hear some my classmates’ opinions on the issue of whether or not children are innately motivated to learn or need to learn to be motivated with the aid of a system. These two issues parallel a prominent theme that oftentimes is found in Literature and Film. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, for example, a debate that arose in my 10th grade classroom was whether or not the monster killed some of the character’s in the story purely because it was born a monster (and therefore, evil and soulless by nature), or because certain events in the story lead it to commit the crimes just as any human would have under the same circumstances. From the very little I remember from my class, which seems distant now, I thought the second argument was more compelling because there was evidence in the story that indicated that the monster was peaceful by nature, but if memory serves me correctly, it got pissed off because Victor didn’t create a wife for him (or something like that).
So where am I going with this? I don’t believe kids are born with a lack of motivation and the presupposition that they can’t learn because they’re stupid (or something along those lines). I remember my Statistics professor last semester even saying that Statistically speaking (of course), all humans are not so different from each other from an intellectual point of view. The only thing that differentiates someone who is “unintelligent” and someone who is “intelligent” is that the latter worked harder. Now the question we want to ask ourselves is not what biological factors lead person A to become more intelligent than person B, but why did person A work harder than person B? There are many possible reasons: person B was abused as a child, was deprived from privileges that person A enjoyed, person B was discouraged from reaching his or her potential with uninviting words from friends and family, etc. My belief is that the environment has a strong impact on how our presuppositions and ideas are crafted within our minds.
One only needs to look at the example set by Jaime Escalante, a teacher who motivated a bunch of gang-bangers and taught them calculus. How? I believe because the children’s environment changed and they had a teacher who (as cheesy as it sounds) believed in his kids and was able to tap into their full potential (talk about no child left behind). It would have been much easier for Mr. Escalante to assume that his kids are incapable of learning anything, and thus, should spoon feed information to them because 1) it makes his job easier, and 2) because his kids will actually have a chance at passing a simple standardized test that not only gives students a false sense of satisfaction, but also gives a reason for the school to quickly and efficiently move students out in order to make room for a new breed of failures entering the following year.
“Hope you can’t afford college, because the world needs people to flip burgers!” - Society
[...] Original post by sonic911 [...]
I remember having those debates about the “monster” in high school . . . I hated having the most sympathetic character in the novel left unnamed, so in all my essays, I called him “Daniel.” Somehow I didn’t lose points for that. But I digress.
Anyway, I wanted to agree with the fact that environment is as influential as structured education. This is, I think, part of the problem when it comes to evaluating the effectiveness of traditional education methods. We could revolutionize the school system, but if Child B is still being put down and discouraged by his/her family, how much of a difference will this new-and-improved system make?
Great post. People like Escalante demonstrate just how big a difference one person can make. As Alyssa points out, though, it’s hard to convince students they’re capable of excellence when the rest of their environment tells them the opposite message, loudly. And it’s hard to find teachers as determined and creative as Escalante.
Hard, but by no means impossible….