Opinion Talk

By Lyrazel

June 2, 2005 07:37 AM | Link to this

Does it matter if they are motivated? We give Americans a free education from Pre-K to 12th grade. If they dont appreciate it—who cares? Let them work at low-paying schlock jobs that are readily available in GA. Let them pick onions, let them clean shrimp, let them serve McDonalds until ketchup bleeds out their pores—it doesnt hurt me if they are bored and undermotivated. Nursing homes need attendents to clean bedpans and unmotivated students will realize—life doesnt wait for them, ever.

By Van

June 2, 2005 09:13 AM | Link to this

Motivation, We don’ need no motivation.

With todays permissive society, and lack of personal responsibility, why should we have to motivate the students?

Without competition in class, and teachers who lack authority to discipline we have raised a younger generation that is more interested in the new XBOX, than working at a deadend job at McFriendly’s.

With no self motivation these children will amount to nothing special. Trying to instill some self respect in these slackers will profit us nothing.

Now - for those that have self discipline and a sense of worth the sky is the limit. For those that need motivating, I would recommend an island getaway called Parris Island, in sunny South Carolina.

“Let no man’s ghost return and say his training was not good enough” Sign over training hall door Parris Island, SC

By Yvonne Law

June 2, 2005 10:52 AM | Link to this

Certain Ga students are not motivated enough. There are too many distractions. Rich parents provide everything to their children. They have no need. Poor parents have to send their children to work part time in the beginning, these students have less time to study. Instead of balancing their work-study time when they fall behind, they are tempted to work more to make more money. We are asking for a cultural change, it takes time. Start by involving parents in their kids’ education even to a point of sacrifice.

By Scooter

June 2, 2005 11:48 AM | Link to this

Hah!

By Tricia

June 2, 2005 11:53 AM | Link to this

Children are born with an innate desire to discover their world and learn all they can learn. Unfortunately, we as a nation currently squash that desire with cheap, inappropriate television, ridiculously inappropriate video games, lack of parental attention and concern, and school systems that are more focused on test passing than they are on actual education.

There was a time in my childhood when I strayed off the straight and narrow and was desperately in need of solid parental guidance. Despite the financial hardship it presented my family, my Mother quit her full time job and made sure that she was there to see me off to school and was there when I got home. I learned that my success was important to my family and it became important to me.

In an age when most children are in daycare by 3 months, television is a parent’s best friend, and most children can run computers, DVD players, and VCRs by age 2; how can we expect children to be motivated to learn from people and books. When we teach children to pass tests not to explore their worlds and understand that what they learn in school has real world application, we teach them to be apathetic and disinterested.

We as parents, educators, and communities need to be more involved in our children’s educations. Our motivation to see them succeed will allow them to maintain their natural curiosity and motivation to learn, and we will all be well rewarded.

By Betsy Kerr

June 2, 2005 01:29 PM | Link to this

Georgia students ARE motivated, but by the wrong things. They are pampered by parents, receiving luxuries they should be asked to work for - cars, cell phones, clothes, cd’s. They are passed by teachers who are under pressure both from their own liberal attitudes of self-esteemism and from parents who don’t expect their children to have to pay consequences. They are inundated by entertainment media which assures them daily that all that is needed for success is to know how to shoot a hoop, rap dirty lyrics, look pretty, or make a fool of themselves on public TV. Worst of all, they are cosseted by a government that will support them when they don’t make good academically or professionally. In short, they are not given any good reason to succeed academically. This is the fault of parents, teachers, the media, the government, and anyone else who allows this attitude to permeate our culture. When we stop running interference and making excuses for them, they will learn that doing well in school goes a long way in achieving goals which no one will procure for them.

By Dan

June 3, 2005 10:28 AM | Link to this

lyrazel is right on point Should parents try to motivate their kids absolutely. Should society, maybe but if you ask Is it societies responsibility? abosilutely not. There are unlimited opportunities presented to any child in this country. They either make the most of them or ignore them like Lyrazel said we need people to clean bedpans

By Van

June 3, 2005 02:56 PM | Link to this

And folks, let not forget ADD/ADHD and the side effects of Ritalin. In the old days, boys were just boys, now with the new drugs, Adderall, Dexedrine and Cylert, they can be mind numbed little robots. I wonder how motivated robots are?

With no physical activity at school, gameboys at home and 200 cable channels and you have our future leaders.

By notsofast

June 4, 2005 02:38 AM | Link to this

Education?What’s that? There is no education going on here.And that’s why nobody is motivated.Motivated to do what? Get some crummy little dead end job after you’ve spent over a decade learning by rote mostly a bunch of government civics and corporate propaganda and then regurgitating it to a bunch of bored teachers who then compare the student’s ability to memorize a bunch of mostly irrelevant and totally useless information all the while complaining about how little money they’re making.Motivated? Has anybody bothered to teach anything worthwhile that might help students to cope with the daily madness of our frightening world? Of course the students are dazed and confused and looking for any escape from this endless tedium and the slow death of miseducation.Drugs,sex,music,alcohol and many other evasions are all a direct result of the lack of any REAL EDUCATION.With a genuine education these escapes would eventually disappear because people would be MOTIVATED to fix the insane way we’re now living.That’s what a real education should be;how to live sanely in this insane and ruthless world……

By Van

June 7, 2005 09:33 AM | Link to this

Bravo notsofast, Well done, I happen to agree with you this time. Real education went away somewhere during the last 40 years. The new ideas are just experiments with our children as lab animals. Tried and true methods of teaching, the teaching that taught us older citizens and our parents and grandparents are long gone. The records still stand to the detest of the “progressive” teaching establishment, all hail the bloated teachers unions.