When my son was in pre-school, a puzzle provided him a lesson he remembers to this day. Seated at our kitchen table, he had put together most of the puzzle, but he couldn’t finish because one piece was missing.
Frustrated, he looked everywhere but could not find the missing piece. Unable to suppress a smile, I pointed that it was hanging from his shirt — right under his nose.
I was reminded of that moment while attending a forum of education and policy leaders in Atlanta.
As they argued about the relative merits of college enrollment rates vs. college graduation rates as academic performance metrics, I couldn’t help thinking they were overlooking a key ingredient: student motivation.
No combination of inspired teachers, great school leaders, and well-designed programs can succeed in turning around our disastrous educational system unless students themselves are motivated and engaged.
Former Education Secretary Terrel Bell pointed to it when he said: “There are three things to remember about education. The first is motivation. The second one is motivation. The third one is motivation.”
Dropout data point to motivation and psychological engagement in learning as core to getting students to believe and behave in ways that increase their chances of success.
We need to ask ourselves how our current policies and programs are or are not intersecting with this opportunity to drive improved academic outcomes for children.
When asked about motivation’s relationship to the academic performance metrics, forum panelists offered unconvincing, feeble responses that made it clear to me that few understand the opportunity to connect increased student motivation and engagement to the academic performance goals they espoused.
We need to view students not as passive vessels into which we heap our desires for them, but as human beings who have infinite potential to actualize their desires and accomplish great things.
And, if we also view learning as a precursor to achievement, then we just might move to a new paradigm in education policy that leads to innovation in our toolbox and discourse.
The paradigm would help us develop more self-regulating students, young people who are motivated to persist in academic tasks that lead to mastery (otherwise known as working really hard), who understand the meaning of what they learn and who appreciate learning for how it enriches them individually and us as a society.
I’m for recognizing and rewarding academic persistence, academic mastery and understanding, and new ways that increase the intrinsic satisfaction of learning that comes when students are motivated to be stronger students.
My son’s enjoyment in solving puzzles motivated him to complete increasingly more difficult ones when he was younger, but he needed my encouragement and inventiveness as he grew to inspire him to find the intrinsic motivation he needs to succeed in college today.
We can inspire more of Georgia’s children to achieve if we focus on the opportunity to connect learning performance to academic performance and key in on the relationship between student motivation increased engagement in learning and commitment to achieve.
Etienne R. LeGrand is president and co-founder of the W.E.B. Du Bois Society, whose mission is to transform the lives of more African-American youth through increased academic ambition.
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