Education and Motivation

[Terry]

It has been seen that the modern age students are not enough motivated for education. There are many reasons can be described in this case specially the behavior of teacher and the teaching style plays a very important role to motivate the student. Then the informal interaction with student, the nature of assignments and structure of course are very important factor to motivate the students for their education

[Gilgamesh]

School curriculum is more difficult than it used to be. Also, for young people, school is a popularity contest 1st and education 2nd.

[Darth]

I'm a high school drop out.

I didn't get motivated to learn until I was 20 or so. I failed year 11, twice. I rarely attended school and if I handed in an assignment, it was late.

I'm now a uni student. And while I still have a number of bad habits that I struggle with (assignments get done the night before, though they are never late) I'm a trillion times better than I was. The bad habits and my issues with school started round about year 7 (just before high school) but things got worse in year 10, and terrible in year 11.

To get into uni I had to sit the STAT test, which is a test for mature age students only, it gives you an equivalent ATAR mark (which is the final high school exam here in Australia,). The STAT test is divided into 2 components, written and 'maths' (it's more like logic, those maths game thingies). The ATAR mark is a score out of 100. Out of 100, I scored a 92.3. That was with a grand total of 3 hours preparation (going to the adult high school's 3 hours STAT prep session). A 92.3 is good enough to get me into all but the most competitive of courses, like medicine for instance (think it's 95 for that), and the courses with specific maths requirements.

That right there is one of the issues.

Without wanting to sound arrogant, I was rather brilliant. School was mind numbingly dull and what I learnt was largely out of my control. Little was challenging until I stopped showing up, then things eventually became challenging but for the entirely wrong reasons. I went from being in the top maths classes, to the mediocre ones, which didn't do my pride much good. Some of the things the second high school I attended (year 11) did in my seccond year there were more embarrassing still. What saved me was dropping out of that school and going to an adult high school (we have 2 main ones in my city). No nonsense, no P.E, no assemblies, no being treated like children (even though a select number of students were like me, minors who were fresh drop outs). As there were no nonsense, only the classes that you selected and needed, there was quite a large amount of free time to be had when compared to a normal high school. I still wasn't attending as much as I should have been, but it was better than year 11 had been. I had a large part of my Thursday free, so I went down to my local TAFE college (don't know quite how to describe them, they're post secondary education and they give technical certs and diplomas for the most part) to learn a language, as I had always wanted to do. And that was the important thing, learning what I wanted to learn. They had one of the languages I wanted on a thursday morning on a part time basis so I signed up. And I loved it. The next year I signed up to learn the language full time at the TAFE college (so dropping out of high school doing finishing year 12, our final year) and though it wasn't the most challenging of courses (until the interpreting course) it was what I wanted to do, so I showed up very regularly. This choice to leave the adult high school and go to TAFE however eventually led to me getting kicked out of home*. I trained to become an interpreter, though I failed the final test to become an interpreter with the national accreditation authority by a mere 1% (most fail on their first shot, I'll be doing it again don't you worry) but attending the language and interpreting courses gave me a love for linguistics, which led me to my current uni course (speech pathology, not linguistics, I do need a job after I graduate).




*with the languages you start at Cert II, and move up to CERT III, IV and diploma. TAFE isn't at all prestigious, and Cert II's are for the most part a complete joke.

[Annik]

Maybe we should impart our children with values that education is "good for the soul" and not just good for upping your paycheck.

[Ben Davis]

It has been seen that the modern age students are not enough motivated for education. There are many reasons can be described in this case specially the behavior of teacher and the teaching style plays a very important role to motivate the student. Then the informal interaction with student, the nature of assignments and structure of course are very important factor to motivate the students for their education

In the UK, that's not the case: a higher proportion of students are staying in school longer & (although there are arguments regarding the difficulty of exams) getting better results than ever before.

I fear that may change: recent decisions by the government to reduce spending on education & increase tuition fees for higher education will have a detrimental impact on the quality of the education and the motivation of people to become/remain students. If the government is unwilling (and it is 'unwilling' not 'unable') to invest in education, people will end up thinking 'why should I bother?'.

[naimless]

It just depends on your teachers really.

I had an English teacher that, no matter how much effort I put in, always gave me the same C grades. I didn't change my style at all and the next year I was getting A*s with a different one.

I remember in Spanish as well, my teachers would mark me really low for not hitting mark schemes but when I went to do an oral exam I'd get the highest marks because the external examiner wanted an actual real conversation - not some prepared monologue.

My supervisor for my finals this year is a real cunt and it is stressing me out like fuck and going to cost me my degree.

[qcrichardd]

I find meaning in having fun. Life is to sort to try to focus energy on looking for a meaning. Have fun and bash christians and life will be fulfilling.

[KichigaiNeko]

chardd

[Sedna]

It has been seen that the modern age students are not enough motivated for education.

I doubt it was ever any different. Except now unmotivated students don't have the option just taking up the family trade or whatever instead(if they had the option for education in the first place). I would imagine students are much more motivated now if anything since there is so much pressure on getting a good job.

I don't really consider myself a motivated student. School seems to primarily be about getting enough crammed in for the test. After that, most people just forget it. Schools don't bother to really get you to understand things.
I prefer going my own autodidactic way.