Intrinsic or extrinsic motivations of learning in children here, translated…
That day, there was a seminar at my son, Sky’s school, the topic was on the children’s problems in learning. The lecturer had the background of psychology, and she’d, explained the means from the biological, and the psychological angles, of how our children learn, their memories, and mindsets, and taught us tips on how to help our young get more motivated in learning, to help them learn better.
I’d jotted down the lecture notes, looking at how the powerpoint slides printouts, with the parents, all around me, taking notes, listening tentatively, asking questions.
In the stage of pressures from school, as the paces of learning the children had, doesn’t quite match up to the parents’ expectations, there are bound to be, conflicts, and, the parents and children may get on each other’s nerves, and, that would be the fork in the road from when they will no longer, be close to one another.
the motivations for learning, for children should come, from within, like this…
The lecturer was amazing, and her words made us all agreed, and, she’d given us a ton of practical means, and, being layback in all of my classes, I’d not gotten hurried to write anything down, thought: thank heavens, that Sky didn’t have anything that worried me in his learning, and there weren’t that many times we’d conflicted.
Every child has a different nature, maybe, he’s naturally driven to learn new things, or maybe, because we believed in him, simply.
Because I keep on believing, that children have the strong motivations to learn, and their motives for learning wasn’t from to avoid getting punished, not because they wanted the rewards of a video game, treats, even the commends from, the parents.
It’s for themselves, because they KNEW they can manage it, and, that sense of achievement after they’d gained whatever it is they wanted to gain. Like how the adults ran the marathons, that sense of, “there’s no limit to what I can do” as we crossed the finish lines, or like the tennis player, smacked that winning hit, and screamed out loud, what, I can, do it, that sense of, accomplishment of the self.
It’s not about the cash prizes, the external rewards, but, from that sense of motivation to be better, to grow from within themselves.
Children are exactly like that, simpler, even, it’s just, that we adults, don’t really, believe that. We’d rolled around in the world too long, with the experiences, the affirmations from the adults in our lives, and, if we don’t used the means of rewards and/or punishments, we can’t, get our own young to do what we tell them to do.
Sometimes, we just, don’t have enough faith, enough trust in our own, selves, and our own, children.
What’s worse, was that we sometimes, make things, worse, we used our own “ways”, to make them get motivated by the external factors, that they’d slowly, forgotten, the more important, intrinsic motivations of what drove them to do the things we tell them to.
And, this motive that’s, from within, is way more powerful, than all the external, materialistic, rewards, stronger than what we can, ever imagine…………last winter vacation, Sky went to a martial arts camp. Martial arts required a ton of energy to learn, especially, for a child who’s, muscles hadn’t matured yet, these basic trainings are considered, tortures to them. The martial arts instructor, after that very first class, had the student write down the goals of what they wanted to accomplish after the five-day long camp. As Sky got down on the floormats, in his fatigue, sweating like crazy, turned it in to his martial arts instructor, I’d accidentally found that he’d, drawn a weird looking figure, throwing the punches, with the barely legible words, “I want to be a better version of my self”.
I’d stared at the page, remained silent for a long, long, time. This page was written using a cute figure, and the words he’d just learned to write in Chinese, mixed in, with the phonetic spellings, but his words, moved me.
And so, this, is the importance, to have the children feel motivated toward learning, and it’s just, unfortunate, how the schools in the world right now, don’t focus on teaching the kids to find their own motivations for learning, because the schools are focused on the academics, the scholastic performances, and, the children may be performing up to “standards”, because they can’t afford not to, because if they don’t measure up, they get, punished for it, and that would, kill off their loves for learning for sure.