131–140 of 244 posts
For anyone interested in this type of stuff, I can recommend reading Drive . Briefly, human behaviour can be motivated for extrinsic and intrinsic reasons. The rewards in this article are extrinsic motivators. Exploring is rewarding in an intrinsic way; it is a strive towards autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In adults (and in older children) applying extrinsic motivators kills intrinsic motivation. Once the extrinsic…
I guess I must have bever lost the child in me. I've been a fan of open world games, just so I can roam the world. I sometimes dont even play the storyline at all. I still don't like that Steam added 'achievements' that I can't turn off, I'll be in charge of what constitutes a goal thank you very much :) Another poster had an interesting observation about academia vs corporate work. I'm 33 and still in academia, and…
If I'm doing the same thing for too long it becomes an almost impenetrable blocker in my mind, it's like if I try to do the task again there is a mental block that doesn't allow me to imagine it. I have been working on the tools to push through this but I decided it's ultimately a problem with my lifestyle. I was never going to be happy working 9-5 on the same types of work all year.
I started working for myself once I realized this, and do considerably fewer hours, of course also making less money. I'm happier by far and getting more done than I did before in the time I do work, and getting more "life" done as well. I'm lucky enough to be able to do that and still make a living.
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Decent high school grades are not that hard to get. It's not 'strangulation' to have to take 'English, Geography, History and Math'. I wish I had paid more attention in English class, I did not respect how important it was going to be until later in life, for example. The course load in Eng. or in Grad School - now that can be overwhelming to the point of exhaustion.
Decent Eng Grad School grades are not that hard to get. It's not 'exhausting' to have to take 'Electrodynamics, Orbital Mechanics, or Geophysics' I wish I would have paid more attention in Project Management class, I did not respect how important it was going to be until later in life, for example. See how stupid that sounds
Theoretically the courses are probably designed to allow most people to succeed.
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I often see criticism of the school system like yours. I think it comes from a perspective of a fairly intelligent, self-motivated individual, probably from a family that valued education. However many children lack one or more of those factors. For them the intrinsic motivation is to play video games all day, or talk to their friends, or smoke weed. There is no intrinsic motivation for most children to learn all the…
> I often see criticism of the school system like yours. I think it comes from a perspective of a fairly intelligent, self-motivated individual, probably from a family that valued education. I ain't vain enough to consider myself even "fairly intelligent", but I can say that I ain't very self-motivated, nor have I been since elementary school, and in hindsight my education system's insistence on strangling such intri…
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It makes no sense to blame a bad outcome on the student being uninterested and of lower skill. As a tutor, you have exactly two jobs: 1. Make the student interested. 2. Improve the student's skills. Of course the student is uninterested and has low skills when you start out. Otherwise there wouldn't be much of a point to the activity. You might argue that it's not the tutor's job to make the student interested, but i…
So now, you are blaming another kid for failure to be perfect tutor where adult educated teacher failed too. And that good kid is supposed to study out tutoring methods from materials targeted at adults. Which is definitely not fun free exploration for that good kid. Which is why literally this whole setup where you have good students tutoring weak ones is a trap and punishment for the good one. Expecting well behave…
Nowhere did I state I expected any expert tutors from children. I merely said that something, anything at all, is better than nothing. It might not even be better in all cases, but on average, the evidence tells us it is.
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Decent high school grades are not that hard to get. It's not 'strangulation' to have to take 'English, Geography, History and Math'. I wish I had paid more attention in English class, I did not respect how important it was going to be until later in life, for example. The course load in Eng. or in Grad School - now that can be overwhelming to the point of exhaustion.
Decent Eng Grad School grades are not that hard to get. It's not 'exhausting' to have to take 'Electrodynamics, Orbital Mechanics, or Geophysics' I wish I would have paid more attention in Project Management class, I did not respect how important it was going to be until later in life, for example. See how stupid that sounds
High schoool English, Geography, History and Math is referenced as easy by many students. Typical student does not have a problem to pass that class.
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> As for tutoring itself: it increases the skill level of both the teacher and the student. As someone who was a kid in that position, no it did not increased my skill in thing I was supposed to teach at all. That might happen when you are teaching interested peer at similar level, does not happen when you are teaching someone uninterested and someone who has much lower skills. > For example, toddlers learn primarily…
It makes no sense to blame a bad outcome on the student being uninterested and of lower skill. As a tutor, you have exactly two jobs: 1. Make the student interested. 2. Improve the student's skills. Of course the student is uninterested and has low skills when you start out. Otherwise there wouldn't be much of a point to the activity. You might argue that it's not the tutor's job to make the student interested, but i…
What you are describing is out of range for peer tutoring (child-to-child) which is what I was thinking of. For children, the motivation for the task doesn't need to come from the subject matter itself, the very fact that a friend/peer is working with you can be all the motivation you need.
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> It would be near impossible for a true lack of intrinsic motivation to have made it through evolutionary selection. Be careful making assumptions like that. Suicidal tendencies made it through evolutionary selection, after all.
For the case of suicide there is a potential mechanism in which there is a benefit for genes to pass. We can imagine a hardship scenario in which removal of oneself leaves more resources to the remainder of one’s group, which is likely to be their kin and have shared genes. In this case suicide would be adaptive for the genes to pass on. This is nor far fetched because we see other self sacrifice behavior (e.g. betwe…
Likewise, your evolutionary arguments for motivation are equally useless. Evolution takes place on much larger timescales than the changes in our environment. 3000 years is almost nothing in terms of meaningful evolution through natural selection, and the world has drastically changed in the last 400, or 150, or even 70!
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Also Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards, a thick tome dedicated to the research and reasons of how and why punishment and rewards don’t teach what’s intended and don’t motivate as intended... and how extrinsic motivation kills intrinsic motivation. Withdrawing rewards is punishment so both are really the same. Human beings are not designed to be trained like rats and birds, regardless of what many believe. If your kid…
>If your kid is good at something and you want them to lose interest, encourage or reward them for doing the thing :) Genuine question: What do you do if you want them to get better then?
"You have been trying to find that bug for hours. That's true perseverance!"
"I like the sound effects you added. They really draw me into the game even more."
"It sounds like you're using a technology you haven't before. Trying is the only way to learn new things."
"This runs so smoothly!"
Also, ask questions.
"How did you get the enemy to follow my character?"
"I feel like the game is unfair when I die here. Is there anything you can do to make this section not so difficult?"
"I understood what I was meant to do right away. Can you think of why that was?"
Note how you don't even have to be positive when you do it this way. Simply sharing the experience goes a long way. Encouraging critical thought and decision-making makes it even better.
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> As for tutoring itself: it increases the skill level of both the teacher and the student. As someone who was a kid in that position, no it did not increased my skill in thing I was supposed to teach at all. That might happen when you are teaching interested peer at similar level, does not happen when you are teaching someone uninterested and someone who has much lower skills. > For example, toddlers learn primarily…
It makes no sense to blame a bad outcome on the student being uninterested and of lower skill. As a tutor, you have exactly two jobs: 1. Make the student interested. 2. Improve the student's skills. Of course the student is uninterested and has low skills when you start out. Otherwise there wouldn't be much of a point to the activity. You might argue that it's not the tutor's job to make the student interested, but i…