Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! This is a place for me to organize and display my thoughts on education and get feedback. My current plan is to open a private high school called Murray Academy. Above are pages with my most recent thoughts. Enjoy!

Monday, September 17, 2012

Shrunken Student Motivation

Etienne R. LeGrand mentions in an article entitled "How to motivate students when culture attacks ambition" that one of the main reasons schools fail is because of a decline in overall student motivation over the last few decades. This is one of the things primary schools need to address in curriculum: getting students to love learning and want to be the best in the world.




How to motivate students when culture attacks ambition
From the Atlanta Journal Constitution, October 6, 2010
By Etienne R. LeGrand
9:06 p.m. Tuesday, October 5, 2010
The recent testing scandal in Georgia schools has prompted a spate of articles focusing our attention even more sharply on our nation’s education crisis and the significant need for school reform.
Both educators and policymakers continue the heated debate about the need for more effective teachers, more rigorous and relevant curriculum and the eradication of other underlying socioeconomic causes that collide to contribute to our declining national competitiveness.
In a recent column, Washington Post economist Robert Samuelson suggested the reason we have spent so much money on educational reform with so little positive result may be that our educational crisis cannot be blamed entirely on bad teachers, ineffective school management or selfish unions.
“The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation,” wrote Samuelson. “Students, after all, have to do the work. If they aren’t motivated, even capable teachers may fail. Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a ‘good’ college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school ‘reform’ is that if students aren’t motivated, it’s mainly the fault of schools and teachers.”
Wrong, he said. “Motivation is weak because more students [of all races and economic classes] don’t like school, don’t work hard and don’t do well. In a 2008 survey of public high school teachers, 21 percent judged student absenteeism a serious problem; 29 percent cited ‘student apathy.’ ”
We agree with Samuelson, and since 2004 the mission of the W.E.B. Du Bois Society here in Atlanta has been to ignite academic ambition among more African-American youth so they graduate from high school college-and-career ready. Our focus on student motivation and engagement was buoyed by research findings in Laurence Steinberg’s 1996 book “Beyond the Classroom,” which directly cited student motivation as a root cause of the widespread poor educational achievement we are witnessing.
Among his findings from a study of more than 20,000 students in urban and rural school districts across the U.S., Steinberg reports that one in five students says he doesn’t try as hard as he can in school because he is worried about what others will say. Only 32 percent of teens say their friends believe it’s important to get good grades and just 20 percent say it’s important to go to one of the best colleges. The number of hours students say they spend working “hard almost every day” varies by ethnic group, with African-Americans admitting the fewest hours per week working on their studies. It is hardly surprising that the total number of hours spent weekly on schoolwork pales in comparison to the time most students dedicate to extracurricular activities such as sports.
Lest we forget, students must work to achieve significant academic outcomes with the same motivation and commitment they invest in sports and other extracurricular activities. We’re working to make African-American students view success in the classroom as “cool” and desirable as success on the basketball court or the football field.
Here’s what we have learned:
● In our culture, the reward system for African-American youth is dangerously askew. Our young people get far more powerful and effective reinforcement from their peers, the media and the community at large for achievement in sports and entertainment than for success in the classroom.
● Entertainers are much more powerful role models today than they were a generation ago. I loved the Temptations, but never thought of David Ruffin or Eddie Kendrick as someone to emulate. Today, however, entertainers like T.I. and Lil Kim exert a powerful influence over young people, and it’s often not a good one.
● Good students will respond enthusiastically to opportunities to spend time with other good students, and high potential students can be motivated to be better students when they are recognized and rewarded for their effort and accomplishment in the classroom — just as we recognize and reward effort and accomplishment in other arenas.
● It’s one thing to say we expect them to achieve; it’s another to help students understand how achievement happens. Through one of our programs, we are communicating to students that they themselves are the difference between their success and failure. We communicate the importance of developing such essential skills as group study and the mind-set that with hard work and dedication, they can make anything happen — even improve their grades. Students understand the connection between hard work and practice and an improved free throw percentage, but lack the motivation and discipline to work as hard in the classroom to master math or science.
We’ve heard from some students that studying is just not that much fun, yet we know that building muscle memory through the repetition of an activity can pay off on the court and in the classroom.
Education is the key to success and it is our most urgent issue. Our work at the Du Bois Society inspires African-American students — the most at risk among them — to strive for excellence no matter how challenging their socio-economic circumstances may be because we know that poverty is not destiny. We also know that when preparation meets opportunity, we increase our odds for success.
Etienne R. LeGrand is president of the W.E.B. Du Bois Society in Atlanta.

No comments:

Post a Comment