Motivation is the Key to Success
A recent Gallup poll shows that 76% of elementary school students, 61% of middle schoolers, and only 44% of high school students feel engaged in their schools, indicating a drop in students’ interest in school as they stay in the education system longer. Furthermore, an even more recent poll shows that only 3 out of 10 Americans feel actively engaged with their jobs once they leave school. What’s causing this emotional separation?
One important factor is the lack of motivation. Students or adults who are truly passionate about school or their jobs will go to any means to achieve as much as possible. However, schools are not encouraging this type of learning and instead pushing a standardized curriculum that teachers are forced to teach and that students are forced to learn, regardless of each student’s interests and learning style.
For some people, this may not seem too bad. Learning is inherently good no matter what information is being absorbed, and an organized curriculum is beneficial in many ways, but what happens once we graduate? Does our education abruptly come to a stop because a teacher isn’t telling us information? Learning could become a lifelong process with the expanse of knowledge available on the Internet, but only if one were fueled with the motivation and passion.
Sadly, this is not happening. We spend millions of dollars every year teaching English classes to students that stop reading once they leave school. Nearly every student will at some point learn to graph a hyperbola by hand, only to never use math without a calculator for the rest of their lives.
If education reform is to have any real impact, it has to start by motivating kids to want to learn, and not just for
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