In article
<88b91724-300b-4248-8208-f4798a3526cb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Pubkeybreaker <pubkeybreaker@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> The article does fail to mention one thing that I believe is
> applicable.
> Success in school depends not only upon ability, (which is clearly
> lacking
> in a large ****tion of the population), but also upon MOTIVATION. Too
> many
> people simply don't VALUE education. And these people have no chance
> of succeeding. An interesting question is whether lack of motivation
> is a result
> of lack of ability. How strong is the correlation between the two?
> I suspect that
> it is very strong, but lack data. Have any stuidies been done? I
> would enjoy
> seeing some discussion about this within this NG.
Well, in some ways it's obvious. I'm hopeless at s****t, so I don't value
s****t any more (despite family and social values to the contrary). If I
found
school extremely difficult OR unpleasant, I wouldn't value it either (cf
Lee
on public schools...). OTOH yes, motivation is im****tant; there are
plenty of
brilliant-but-feckless people in the world who have not "fulfilled their
potential" (if that phrase has any real meaning) and plenty of average
sloggers who have achieved a great deal through sheer persistence.
Teaching MUST have a role here, though. In the gifted community, I read
about
students who treat education with contempt because their experience of it
has
lacked any challenge. It is, of course, also counterproductive to have a
student completely out of his depth. As I see it, part of the role of the
teacher is to give each student sufficient challenge in what they learn to
keep them interested and moving ahead.
--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)
http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/
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