Controversy Project
On the first day of school, I will collect my homework and check my homework as usual. As I expected, there are always some students who do not complete their homework, and the quality of the homework completed is relatively high, and they are the best in the class. I also have a lot of doubts in my mind, why can't children learn actively? Why can't they get the energy up to try new things? Are these issues related to children's attitudes towards learning? When I have questions, I find the answers, and I find that the problem lies in the internal drive.
The lack of internal motivation is the real reason why parents can't push their children to learn independently
In 2017, Harvard University proposed the "20 Rules for Happy Learning". The sixth rule is: do what you want to do.
Here reveals a truth: only by doing what you want to do can you awaken the "internal drive" to do things. In other words, let children discover what they are passionate about, and the things that children love are often where children's abilities lie. Only by doing these things can children achieve a sense of value, and the sense of value of learning allows children to change qualitatively from "tired of learning" to "loving learning", which is the key to promoting children's active learning.
If you look closely at the family parenting pattern of the child around you, you will understand whether the child's learning is active or passive.
When this parent takes the initiative to "manage" the child's life and learning, and makes a long list of "must-dos" for the child every day, the child will feel that life is stuffed with heavy things by the mother, and lose the time and interest at his disposal, so the child becomes more and more passive, feeling that he is back to the infant age, anyway, everything has the arrangement and instructions of the parents, and he is a person with no sense of self-worth. Therefore, in parent-child wars, we often hear children yelling at their parents: "Leave me alone, okay?!" This sentence reflects the real psychological state of children, they feel that they are always in a weak position, although they are not strong enough to get rid of their parents, but they are already tired of the nagging and discipline of their parents. As for the parents, they feel that they are vulnerable, because they really can't understand and control their children's thoughts and actions, and they don't know what to say except for the details and arrangements. Such negative emotions and feelings of powerlessness have a great negative impact on the development of children's minds and personalities. If a child does not have any sense of worth, how can he have the internal motivation to learn?
Recognize three kinds of internal drives: cognitive internal drive, self-improvement internal drive, and subsidiary internal drive.
So what is "internal drive"?
D**id Pawi Ausubel, a famous cognitive and educational psychologist in the United States, was the first to put forward the theory of internal drive and defined three types of internal drive.
The first is cognitive internal drive, that is, the internal drive that stems from interest. Children are naturally driven by an innate curiosity to acquire knowledge, skills, or abilities that interest them. If, in childhood, this kind of cognitive learning caused by interest is a positive feedback, that is, what the child learns is particularly interesting to him, then his internal motivation to continue learning will continue to increase, and he will continue to drive himself to continue to learn deeply. On the contrary, if the child's "100,000 whys" are often rejected by the parents, or the things that the parents force the children to learn cannot arouse the children's interest, then the children's curiosity will slowly fall asleep, and they will lose their curiosity and interest in the things around them. If a child loses his cognitive motivation at an early age, he will not be able to learn anything, and he will even get tired of learning.
The second is self-improvement and internal drive. Unlike cognitive internal drive, the former comes entirely from the inner and self-interest, while the latter comes from the positive feedback of the external environment, that is, the praise and recognition of others for themselves. For example, a parent's response to an acquisition that undermines a child's self-confidence can also become a hindrance to the child's self-improvement. Although the internal drive for self-improvement is external, it acts directly on the child's inner feelings, so it is a very important external driving force.
The third is the subordinate internal drive, that is, a drive that is dependent on certain conditions. For example, when teachers and parents set some learning or behavioral goals for their children, they tell them that if they achieve these goals, they will receive praise or even material rewards. As a result, the child's heart grows a psychology of seeking recognition and reward, and in order to get these recognition and rewards, the child will complete the goal. Although this is also an internal drive to do things, the starting point of this internal drive is to obtain material rewards, once the external reward conditions disappear, the child's motivation will also disappear, so this is the most passive driving force, so it is called subsidiary internal drive.
So, which internal drive is more effective? What kind of internal drive should we focus on?
I once discussed with some mothers the question of whether a person who succeeds in something is driven by the internal drive of interest, or by the recognition of others, or by the medal or prize money? For example, Liu Huan started practicing singing when he was a child because he liked singing? Or did you like singing because you found that you could sing well and kept getting praise and recognition from your teachers and classmates? Is your child interested in learning because he always got high scores in exams when he was a child, and he was praised all the way, or did he like to learn and be interested in learning since he was a child?
This one sounds as complicated as a tongue twister, and it seems difficult to tell the relationship between the three. In fact, in the process of pursuing self-realization, it is difficult for us to distinguish these three internal drives too clearly. For most children, these three levels of drive need to be mixed to work. Moreover, as the stages of learning and growth differ, there will be dynamic changes between the three of them.
A child will always encounter the following three problems in the process of learning:
1.How high is the enthusiasm for learning?
2.Have you developed good study habits?
3.What are the competencies that support learning?
Some takeaways for us as parents:
1.Work on your child's enthusiasm for learning. Let your child explore and learn on their own. The most fearful thing is that the child is doing his homework, and the parents are watching him and telling him that this question is wrong, and that question is wrong. Have your child complete the independent inspection assignment independently.
2.Help children discover their own strengths and strive to improve themselves under the continuous affirmation of the outside world. Every outstanding student has good habits, abilities, and character. We should also encourage children to discover their own strengths and weaknesses, and develop good habits to enhance their ability is a "soft power" worthy of their long-term struggle.
3.Staying driven is a constant battle. To maintain the key element of "internal drive" - resilience, we can let children look at celebrity biographies to understand how much self-dedication and self-restraint cattle people pay when they encounter ups and downs. You can also let your child communicate more with the cattle around him.
Breaking the mantra of children's "three-minute heat" is the superposition of interest and ability. Let children develop abilities and expertise from their interests. Pure interest does not constitute a child's lasting internal drive, and interest is short-lived and changeable. When we find that children's interests are loyal, we must also create opportunities to continuously superimpose abilities on top of interests, so that the seeds of interest can bear the hard core of ability, so as to form the internal drive of children's interests. However, parents should respect their children's interests first, criticize them less, and do not force their children to like what they don't like. Spend more effort and patience with your child to find your interest and stick to your interest on the road. If you blindly force what you think is a good specialty class, it may backfire. When interest rises to ability, it is also necessary to find a sense of mission for ability. Children must turn their interests into passions, chase goals with their abilities, and then elevate them to long-term missions, simply put, let children establish lofty ideals and ambitions. The inner drive that comes with a sense of purpose is stronger and more lasting than any kind of internal drive.
May my answer be helpful to you! Your affirmation is my greater motivation.