Young children would rather explore than get rewards • Hacker News Board

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#161

Post by heavenlyblue » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 1:45 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #138

acituan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People almost never commit suicide for "leaving more resources to the tribe". They do because they are complex persons living in a complex environment that is radically different from the savannahs for which our genes evolved. 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 te…

Have you seen “natural” watermelons?

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#162

Post by mjow » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

kqr wrote: post #34

adrianN wrote: post #24

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. 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…

Right. You're touching on another important factor: everyone, and especially children, want to belong to a group. They do this by adopting values similar to their peers. When those peer groups have values that include playing video games and exclude exploring learning, it's very hard to motivate members of the group to explore learning. I don't actually have any data on this, but I suspect that applies even under ext…

I also think this is so important and so often improperly addressed in various articles about 'how kids should be taught'. I think most of us who founds 'groups' growing up can relate to this. There is almost an inevitable tendency as well for some form of contrarian group to form, perhaps it's some kind of law of social evolution that some percentage of any assembly of people will not conform and create groups around themselves which will go against the grain. No matter how good your intentions are.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#163

Post by eloff » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

We use a variation of this "four squares" game at Sparkademy. The four squares of randomized point values (there's a pattern to it, but I don't want to give it away here.) The goal is to maximize your score which involves switching between exploring for a better payoff and exploiting what you think is the highest paying square over a large number of trials. We use it to as part of a criteria to identify if a person might be well suited for our innovation online course, and later be able to apply that knowledge in their company.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#164

Post by macspoofing » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

irjustin wrote: post #96

Overall, this style is what Montessori-schools of teaching believe and how they operate. Essentially a self-exploratory based learning style. There's lots of benefit in letting kids simply explore. As a parent, I find I have to stop myself from pushing my child to the 'best' result and let them be. That it's okay to pick a less optimal solution. Where I find this alarmingly true is when outcome/results are negative (…

>Where I find this alarmingly true is when outcome/results are negative (usually ending in pain)

Pain is a very good teacher. Letting children hurt themselves and learn from that (within reason, obviously) is not a bad thing.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#165

Post by rubidium » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

aaron695 wrote: post #98

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…

> The schooling system, with its grades, signed slips, and whatnot, is set up through extrinsic motivation to teach obedience, conformity, and smothering the intrinsic drive so necessary for the creative work we will expect from the children later in life. We finish 50 million kids in school each year. 100's of millions have been through the US system alone over it's history. If this was simply true then I feel like…

I don’t think anyone is encouraging total unstructured freedom.

I went to a school without grades. It encourages cultivating a love of learning. There was concrete feedback on quality of work and assessments of knowledge (tests). But no public grading scale. It’s been awarded 3 blue ribbon awards and consistently outperformed its grading-based peers.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#166

Post by spanhandler » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #142

jariel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Right, but the other 99.9% of people don’t go to a “good” college. Plenty of ones that are considered quite good by the Little Folk—the mere commoners—can be attended with grades far from a 4.0 and nothing special in the extracurriculars department, if your test scores are decent (and I assure you, the cutoff for lots of them is way under what you’d consider good)

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#167

Post by arminiusreturns » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 2:10 PM UTC

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 think you might like this interview with the now deceased but brilliant contrarian educator John Taylor Gatto, in which he speaks about just that in the schooling system and the crazy changes he saw when he said he moved towards a more intrinsic motivation system, though he didn't use those terms:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQiW_l848t8&list=PL463AA90FD...

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#168

Post by chmod775 » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #164

irjustin wrote: post #96

Overall, this style is what Montessori-schools of teaching believe and how they operate. Essentially a self-exploratory based learning style. There's lots of benefit in letting kids simply explore. As a parent, I find I have to stop myself from pushing my child to the 'best' result and let them be. That it's okay to pick a less optimal solution. Where I find this alarmingly true is when outcome/results are negative (…

>Where I find this alarmingly true is when outcome/results are negative (usually ending in pain) Pain is a very good teacher. Letting children hurt themselves and learn from that (within reason, obviously) is not a bad thing.

Especially since while you're small, falling hurts a lot less.

It's surprising to me how people consistently try to discourage traits in children which they at the same time glorify in adults.

I suppose considering how much effort society puts into raising meager people, it's only right we glorify those who manage to manage to grow as a person regardless.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#169

Post by criddell » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

circlefavshape wrote: post #121

dr_dshiv wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try getting children to learn to play guitar or piano or math purely through intrinsic moyovation. They might be into it for a bit, but not enough for regular practice. But, when they have enough skill, they can then develop further intrinsic motivation to really get good. Everything in moderation.

+1 It takes at least 5 years of learning piano to get good enough to enjoy it. IMO this is why adults almost never take it up - we're just not prepared to invest in something that takes so much work with such a distant payoff

That might be due to the way music is taught.

Rocksmith is a guitar playing video game that can be fun from day one. I don't see why similar concepts couldn't be used to teach just about any musical instrument.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#170

Post by brnt » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #75

brnt wrote: post #17

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…

Steel yourself for revelations about academia - unsure what stage you’re at but I’d guess PhD or post doc at most from the comment. Talk to people above you that you absolutely trust about the realities of academia.

Hehe, well aware of those. After my (first) postdoc I managed to get hired in a supportive role (in a whole new field, pretty exciting). If I hadn't managed that, I definitely would not be in academia anymore.