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Young children would rather explore than get rewards

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Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#141

Post by SuoDuanDao »

adrianN wrote: post #24
kqr wrote: post #4

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 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…

Fair enough - but my solution to that has always been, 'pay children to pass their classes'. That would be an extrinsic motivator the kind of families you're referencing would respect.

And annoyingly, when I bring this proposal up, most people talk about how important it is for learning to be intrinsically motivated.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#142

Post by yellowapple »

jariel wrote: post #41
yellowapple wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 high school grades are not that hard to get.

"Decent" high school grades are seldom adequate to even meet acceptance requirements for "good" colleges, let alone actually compete with the straight-A students also applying to said colleges.

Not that this really does anything to address the broader point: that "get into college because you'll make more money" is one of many extrinsic motivators American schools seem to push in order to strangle intrinsic motivators.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#143

Post by quietbritishjim »

zornthewise wrote: post #134
yellowapple wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I am not pursuing a PhD in pure math so I certainly have both interest and ability in doing academic stuff but I found it incredibly hard to get acceptable grades in high school.

> I am not pursuing a PhD in pure math so I certainly have both interest and ability in doing academic stuff

I don't see how the second half of the sentence follows from the first half. Did that "not" slip in by accident? Or do you consider a PhD in pure maths to be evidence of not having academic ability?

-- Yours, offended holder of PhD in pure maths :)

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#144

Post by SuoDuanDao »

acituan wrote: post #66
coddle-hark wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But identical arguments to the suicide-logic can be made about a lack of intrinsic motivation - someone without intrinsic motivation but who is easily externally motivated could be a great asset to a group with more plans than people to enact them. I could imagine plenty of situations where strong intrinsic motivation relative to external motivation could be detrimental to either the individual or the group.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#147

Post by Garlef »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #143
zornthewise wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not pursuing a PhD in pure math so I certainly have both interest and ability in doing academic stuff but I found it incredibly hard to get acceptable grades in high school.

> I am not pursuing a PhD in pure math so I certainly have both interest and ability in doing academic stuff I don't see how the second half of the sentence follows from the first half. Did that "not" slip in by accident? Or do you consider a PhD in pure maths to be evidence of not having academic ability? -- Yours, offended holder of PhD in pure maths :)

I guess this was written on a phone: "now" became "not"

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#148

Post by gomes33 »

For those interested in this topic i recommend reading about the Montessori method.

The basic idea of the Montessori philosophy of education is that every child carries within him/her the man/woman he/she will become. In order to develop the physical, intellectual, and spiritual powers required for this task to the fullest, there must be freedom—freedom to interact with a prepared environment.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#149

Post by Chris2048 »

nickelpro wrote: post #95
stinos wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you'd give adult males a choice of which female to undress, I'm pretty sure they would value "exploration" very highly again Likely, but that's not the same experiment anymore since the sex factor comes into play and living beings are basically programmed to reproduce as much as possible and also with as much variety as possible (maybe oversimplified, but you get the point). So for a smartphone you can talk ab…

Sure but you're missing OP's point. They're saying that novelty is the fundamental drive behind the observed behavior, not some priority towards "exploration" that children have in greater abundance than adults. The children are seeking pleasure through novelty, and the researchers are interpreting that as exploration. The parent comment illustrates how silly that is, if you substitute something that still holds plea…

Given how many adults would board a ship to sail to faraway lands in the past before much was known about the "here be dragons" places, suggests adults still value exploration.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#150

Post by decasteve »

adrianN wrote: post #24
kqr wrote: post #4

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 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…

> This comes at the price of not optimally supporting students who would do much better in a different kind of system.

It depends on the culture of the place the school system is applied in. This kind of blanket utilitarianism by way of school is a sad state for society as a whole. In a country like Canada we have a sordid past, very recently, when implementing the residential school system [0].

That's the more extreme case but I'd argue that elements of that exist in every school system when applied in a one-size-fits-all fashion and when that system has a monopoly on education.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_...

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