Interlude Topic- Motivation-ARCHIVED

Log 4


Introduction

Today, I will be breaking away from education for a moment, because there is one topic that is actually still relevant to education, but it is much more broad, and actually encompasses all sectors of life. It is the thing that drives us to do things, it is the main driving force of human action (and living things). Today, we shall talk about motivation. Before anything else, what is motivation? Motivation is the reason or reason why someone acts or behaves a particular way. Motivation is also the willingness or desire to do something. In this post, I will quote a TED Talk by Dan Pink, and most of the information here will be from there, so you may want to watch that video first for some context. Enjoy!

Relevance with Education

As I have said, motivation is a very important thing in human lives. As motivation is the desire or willingness to do anything. It is also the reason why people do things. Of course, people participate in education because they have a motivation, whatever it is. There are different kinds of motivation, but as time progresses, we begin to forget what our motivation should be. In education, the purpose is to gain more knowledge and to gain useful skills that we can practice in our daily lives, but now, it has been degraded to simply getting scores, passing the grade, graduate, go to university, graduate, get jobs, and done. Anyway, let's dive in, shall we?

The 2 Types

There are 2 main kinds of motivation, intrinsic motivation, and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the desire to do something because they are intrinsically valuable for people, or they matter to that person. For example, doing things because they are our passion, they have a moral value, doing the task is pleasurable in it's own sense, there is a higher end, or there is a sense of rightness. Extrinsic motivation is motivation from the outside, that is when the reason for doing things are external. For example, being promised a monetary reward for doing things, being promised scores for performing well in a test, threatened with a hefty punishment if you don't do a certain something. Essentially, extrinsic motivation is the carrots and sticks. Do something to get a reward, or you'll get punished.

The Case

I would like to remind you that most of the information I have here will be taken from Dan Pink's TED Talk The Puzzle of Motivation, so go check it out. Anyway, I will paraphrase the talk. So we have a famous experiment, known as The Candle Problem. In this experiment, subjects are given a candle, matches, and a box of thumbtacks, as seen in the image above. The task is to attach the candle to the wall so when you light the candle, it doesn't drip wax onto the table. Many people develop creative ideas, some tried attaching the candle using a thumbtack, but failed. Other try to light a match and heat the side of the candle, so it melts, and tries to adhere it to the wall, again, doesn't work. After a while, most people figure out the solution, that is take the thumbtacks out, place the candle on the box, and adhere the box with the candle to the wall using the thumbtacks. Finally, light the candle. The solution can be seen in the image below.

In this experiment, we have to overcome what's called functional fixedness. Most people would see the small box as only a container for the thumbtacks, but they don't realize that the box can also be used as a platform for the candle. For your information, this experiment was first made by a psychologist named Karl Duncker in 1945. So this experiment is quite old.

Now in 1962, a scientist named Sam Glucksberg used this experiment to test the power of incentives. So he put the subjects into 2 groups, to both groups he said that he was going to time them on how quick can they solve the problem. In one group, he said, "I'm going to time you to establish norms, averages for how long it typically takes someone to solve this problem." To the other group, he said, "If you're in the top 25% of the fastest times, I will give you five dollars. If you're the fastest of everyone we're testing here today, you get 20 dollars." Adjusted for inflation, the rewards back then would be 40 dollars and 160 dollars today. Now this amount is even bigger than the amount at the time of Dan Pink's TED Talk. This is a decent amount of money for several minutes of work. It's a nice motivator.

Now the question is, how much faster did the second group solve this problem? The question makes sense as we expect that if you promise someone a reward for completing a task, they will perform better. Anyway, the answer is, the second group performed, 3.5 minutes, LONGER. That was surprising, wasn't it? In the video, he stated that this is not how it's supposed to work, he believes in free markets. I don't believe in free markets, nor do I support capitalism, but that's a topic for another day. Most of the time, if you want people to perform better, you reward them, right? But that is not happening here, instead these incentives just dulls thinking and blocks creativity,

There is a possibility that this experiment is a freak result, but no, this experiment has been replicated for over 40 years, with similar results. Now, Glucksberg made the same experiment again, but with a slight difference, you can see it in the picture below.

As you can see, the box and the thumbtacks are presented as 2 different materials, thus it is much easier now isn't it? In this experiment, there was still 2 groups, on one group: we're testing for norms, and the other group: we're incentivizing. This time, the second group performed much better than the first group. You see, when the experiment is presented that way, it's much more easier, as functional fixedness is gone.

This experiment proves one thing, that external motivators, the if-then reward system, the carrots and sticks, are good for tasks that only involve mechanical skills. That is they already have clear defined goals and a simple set of rules. But when the task involves thinking, then extrinsic motivators just fails, or they even do harm. This is not the last part though, let me give you more evidence.

Economist Dan Ariely and 3 colleagues did a study on MIT students. They gave the students some games, games that involved creativity, motor skills, and concentration. They offered 3 levels of rewards for performance. If students performed very well, they get the largest rewards, and so on. Now as long as the games only involved mechanical skills, bonuses work as they are expected, the higher the reward, the higher the performance. But once the games involved basic thinking skills, the higher the reward, the worse the performance. Of course, the economists were worried that there might be a cultural bias, so they went to Madurai, India.

In India, same deal, some games, 3 levels of rewards. The results are, people offered the medium reward performs no better than the people offered smallest rewards. But, this time, people offered the highest amount of rewards, performed the worse of all. Now capitalists might think this is somekind of a socialist conspiracy, but no, these economists are from MIT, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Chicago. And who sponsored this research? The Federal Reserve Bank of The United States.

Meanwhile, in the London School of Economics, economists looked at 51 studies for pay-for-performance plans in companies. They said, "We find that financial incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance." Anyway, Dan Pink eventually continues that we should not do more of the wrong things, or entice them with a sweeter carrot, or threaten them with a sharper stick. We need a whole new approach.

This new approach is built around the opposite of the carrots and sticks, it's called intrinsic motivation. In his talk, Dan said that there are 3 elements within intrinsic motivation. There are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is the urge to direct our own lives, Mastery is the desire to get better and better at something that matters, and Purpose is the yearning to do what we do in service of something larger than themselves. He then continues with examples of autonomy, but we'll cover that later.

Final Statements

I will continue this post next time, as next time we will discuss intrinsic motivation and it's 3 elements. Anyway, let's wrap up, today I have covered the topic of motivation as presented by Dan Pink. Next time, we will cover the continuation of this topic, and maybe in the near future I can start proposing solutions to the system, that's all for today folks, thanks for reading!

Sources: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript?language=en

ARCHIVED

Education in My School- Failures Part 2-ARCHIVED

Log 3
Friday, 9th December 2016

Introduction

Today, I will continue discussing about what I perceive to be the failures of the system. This post will continue the last topic, so if you haven't read the previous post, take your time! Let's take a short review, last time, I mentioned 2 main failures of the system, the assignments and the lessons. Today, I will discuss several more failures, and if I can, wrap up the failures, and maybe next time, I'll start presenting some plausible solutions. But if the failures are too extensive, we'll just have to see. Enjoy!

Behavioral Problems 

I decided to start off with a very serious problem in my school. That is the students' behavior, is horrible. Common behaviors are noisiness, and sometimes bullying. Yes, bullying still exists in my school, but it's rare and most people can stand it. Noisiness is very common, and it would be strange if the class wasn't noisy, because chances are, something horrible must have happened. But there are behaviors that I consider very bad, and quite disappointing. While not all students do this, some students are disrespectful of some teachers, to the point of calling names on them, when they are not around of course. A less insulting behavior are kids who interrupt the teachers. Yes, the teachers that are being disrespected are not so good either, but that doesn't justify calling them names. These kinds of behaviors are not the worst though, some are even worse.

Now this behavior is what I regard as one of the worst behaviors, a disrespect and ignorance of religion. You see, my school is a Catholic School, so it still regards religious faith highly. Now I am a faithful person, by that I meant someone who has a good relationship with God, and it troubles me that most students I know are quite apathetic with God. Well, to be honest, I do not care if they are faithful or no, as it is their own choice, but I do care when they start to disrespect it. The problem is, whenever we have a mass or prayer in the chapel or the church, most students are very noisy. Now look, I am okay if they don't want to pray and still stays at the chapel, that's fine, it's their own choice. But if they got noisy, and they disturb others who wants to pray, then they are disrespectful of others and they are ignorant. I find it very disturbing as this means most students don't even care about the needs of others, and they don't understand that their actions can affect others negatively. But that is not the end, one time, we had a Via Dolorosa in the chapel, and at one stop, there is the part where there is one of the last words of Jesus Christ. Christians know this, it is. "Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachtani" Or meaning, "My God, My God, Why have You forsaketh me?" This is a phrase that I believe all Catholics or Christians should know. Now something that is very disappointing is at that moment, the reader of the passage, actually laughed, yes, he laughed. What's worse is he is a Catholic. Now you see, this is very disrespectful and ignorant, whatever belief you have, even if you are an atheist. Imagine a guy is lying on his deathbed, and someone was there accompanying him. The dying man said some last words in a weird language, then the guy accompanying laughed because the words sounded weird. Do you think that's polite? No, and it's very disrespectful. In fact, that act probably constitutes as blasphemy.

Anyway, there are many more horrible behaviors of the students, and I don't remember them all, but there is something worse than the behaviors of the students. It is how the school handles the problems, that's what.

The Failures- Addressing Behavioral Problems

You might be asking, "What do you mean by addressing behavioral problems?" Well, this means how the school addresses such problems and how they try to solve it, and it has failed considerably. You see, the teachers' main effort to try and solve this problem is just lecture the students. And the students are very used to lectures, as it has happened in elementary school as well as grade 7. Looking by how the students' behaviors are just as worse as before, I concluded that the students are immune to lectures and they just ignore it altogether. Now before you ask about a counseling center, yes there is a counseling center within the school, but they only call students who has bad scores. Yes, they will call students who has bad behavior, AFTER they violate school rules, but you don't have to violate the school rules to have bad behavior. Another matter is lazy students, which is, almost everyone in my school, and procrastination is the norm.

Now the way the school also tackle this problem is, they almost always put the blame to students. Most of the time, they just advise students to have better attitude next time or something along those lines, but it is a misconception that only the students are responsible for their behaviors. Advising the students over and over again like a broken record won't help, as it is not as easy as, "Oh, I realized my mistakes and I will not repeat again!" And then the person actually does it. Yes, there's the talk of having a strong will and determination, but again, it's not as easy as telling them. And this has been proved by the students' behaviors, the school has repeatedly tried to fix their behaviors with similar methods, but it all fails.

In summary, I really think that the school should find another way. I have a theory, but we'll keep it for later. Now let's move on to the next failure, and maybe final, I hope.

The Failures- The Core of The System, Scores

I have repeatedly told all of you, that scores is a percentage of how much a student understands or master the topic or lesson learnt at the time. It is also a percentage of how well you have performed, and most of the time, a percentage of how much effort you have put into the assignments. All of it is true, even my principal confirmed this, but it has been mistreated now, and most students misunderstands the concept of scores. Most students understands scores more of this goal, this thing that you must achieve to pass the grade. They have a mindset that you must get a good score to pass. Scores are more like a ruler, a tool of measurement to measure your capabilities, not a goal or reward. But now, scores are treated more like this physical object that you get as a reward, students begin to treat scores more like a carrot, and not a ruler.

This understanding makes students become people who does things just to get a reward, or to avoid punishments, a slave under the carrots and sticks system. Of course, it is not the students' fault, as they have been taught this understanding since young, and teachers have explained this definition to the students. Well if it's just a misunderstanding, then we can just clear it up right? That is true but it's not just a misunderstanding, because it's how the schools use scores too.

The school has misused scores and perhaps they themselves misunderstands the concept of scores. They have used scores as a motivator for the students to do tasks and study. So essentially, scores are being used like incentives, by parents and teachers alike. It would make sense that students are taught the wrong definition of scores, as if they understand the true definition, students will probably rebel. Why would they rebel? You see, when a teacher asks, "Do you want to get scores or no?" This is usually said to a lazy student, either in studying or assignments. What the teachers are actually saying would be hard to translate, as I have said, scores are not really this object, but more of a tool of measurement written in percentage. So essentially, the teacher is asking you, "Do you want to be shown to have a good understanding and mastery of this certain topic?" I put the word "shown" on bold because it means that scores show people that a certain student has understood a certain percentage of the lessons learnt, but it doesn't necessarily represents the true understanding of the students. Students may obtain that number by illegitimate means, and they understand nothing in actuality.

Now answering the question of why students would rebel, they would understand that scores are something to measure their abilities, not a carrot. As the school enforces that students should get good scores, this means the school is implying that you must understand and master the lessons taught. Students would eventually question why should they master it, what kind of benefit will they get from doing it, and will it actually be useful for them in the future. At least, that is what teachers are scared of, but they are slightly wrong.

Final Statements

You might be asking, why did I cut off there? Well, this is because I will upload another post next time, that would explain about motivation, and the misconception behind it. There, I will also debunk the carrots and sticks theory. Anyway, let's wrap up. Today, I have told you the 2 more failures of the system, the way they address behavioral problems, and the core of the system, scores. Next time, we'll talk about motivation, and the 2 types of motivation, along with some argumentation.  This will not be the last failures post, because YOU can still share more ideas on the comments. I really hope you share your ideas, because this will not be going anywhere if I don't receive more ideas. Well, that's all from me for today, share your ideas in the comment, thanks for reading!

ARCHIVED

Education in My School- Failures Part 1-ARCHIVED

Log 2
Thursday, 8th December 2016

Introduction

In this post, I shall continue the last topic. I will try to have some sense of structure here, and this post will be more focused. Also, this post will be the first of several other posts discussing specifically about the failures and my proposed solutions to education system in my school. Alongside, I will post some other topics that is related to this big topic. In this post, I will specifically discuss about what I perceive to be the failures of this system, enjoy.

The System

You might be familiar with this education system, score based system where students are forced to do so many assignments and study so many subjects at the same time. But then, they are given almost no time to do the assignments themselves, at least in my school. That is a broad overview of the system in my school. Anyway, we should delve in further to this system, as we must understand the system first if we want to expose the flaws and fix it.

In my school, students study subjects in classes and then given a quiz regularly to test their understanding of each subtopic in a unit, and then given a daily test to test their understanding of the entire unit. In the mid semester, all students takes an exam to test their understanding in the units they learnt in the first mid semester. In the end of the semester, another exam is held to test the students' understanding on the entire subject for that semester. Of course, after each test and quiz, the students are given a score, which is a percentage of how much he/she understands.

The school eventually recognizes the problem that teaching the students only about the theory is insufficient. This is because most students are just concerned with the obtaining of the score, and they do not care about the actual obtaining of knowledge.  Thus, the school decides that there should be something to test not just the student's theoretical understanding, the understanding of the theory, but also practical understanding, that is the understanding of how to put the knowledge they have learnt into practice or application. So, they put in assignments, which usually requires students to put the knowledge they have into practice.

These assignments, usually have the purpose to see if students understands how to put the knowledge they have into practice or if they only understand it theoretically. As always, in the end, the students are given a score, which is a percentage of how well they performed in the task. So far, this doesn't sound so bad, does it?

Soon enough, the school realizes that character and behavior is also important, so, they decided that it will be observed and regulated too. In the end of the school year, an overall report of how well the student has performed, and also the behavior of the students. This will determine whether the students are allowed to pass to the next grade or no.

Also, since I am in a Catholic school, faith is important here, and we have a Religion lesson, which is divided into 2 classes, Catholic religion lesson, and Religiosity lesson for non-Catholics or non-Christians. Non-Christians are still allowed to partake Catholic lesson if they want too.

The Failures-Assignments

Now that we know what is the system, it is time to address the flaws of this system. I will talk about the assignments. The assignments does have a noble cause, that is to make sure that students can apply their knowledge in daily lives, know how does the theory works in practice, and so students can prepare for the future, that is gain necessary skills for the future. The problem is, the volume of the assignments, as well as the difficulty of the assignments are beyond that students can handle, and still keep a good behavior or faithful person. If you read my previous post, you will understand how much assignments there are and how difficult they are.

For most of the time, I think most of the assignments have a good purpose, but it is given in the wrong way, in fact, most students see this as a weight, torture, and others. Eventually students become stressed out, sleep very late at night like at 1 in the morning, or resort to unhealthy stuff for retreat from the stress. You see, too much or too hard assignments can and will affect the students' behavior in a negative way.

The second problem is that these assignments are too standardized, you see, the school knew that everyone has different talents, so they give out multiple assignments on different subjects in effort to solve this problem. But the problem is still, it is possible that students are incapable of doing any of those tasks. As these assignments are so standardized, and the format is very strict, like someone may be talented in social studies, but it is totally possible that they are not good in economics. Yet again, the school over generalizes students and wrongly assumes if a student likes social studies, they should like ALL of social studies, which includes economics, sociology, history, and whatnot. The truth is, students are talented or skilled at VERY specific sections, for example, a student is talented in the knowledge and analysis of economy, but not on the actual practice of economy. By this, I meant a student may be talented in analyzing economy such as economists, but not talented in practicing economy, such as making a business. This applies to all subjects.

In summary, the assignments are unsuccessful in fulfilling their purpose because there are too many of them, the difficulty is beyond the students, and they are too standardized. I believe they have a good purpose, and it is not the intention to stress the students out, or make it a burden. But certain aspects of the assignments must be changed.

The Failures-Lessons

Here is another problem, some lessons in the education is just, unfit, very standardized, or unnecessary as a whole. I shall take a look in one lesson, Physical Education, yes, Physical Education. Before any comments saying I am just lazy and I don't want to exercise, I do believe that sports is important, and you should exercise to stay healthy. I am not saying that Sports should totally annihilated from school, but it seems it is yet again, over generalizing.

You see, in my school, you are required to be able to do all forms of sports in Physical Education(PE) lessons. And this lesson becomes one of the determinants of whether students are allowed to pass to the next grade or not. The problem is, not all students can do sports, and since our minimum score for passing the grade is 70 in all subjects, or basically the minimum score you must achieve to not fail, in anything (assignments, tests, final report, anything that contributes to the final score of a subject). This means we are required to master 70% of all sports that is taught, so far I have learnt basket, shot put, and ping pong. This means I am required to master 70% of the lessons taught. Of course, this doesn't mean mastering 70% of the entire sport, but just 70% of the lesson taught, such as a certain technique taught. Most of this can be mastered by mere practice and repetition, which is a good thing. And you will still be given chances to fix your score, but if all else fails, you will only be required to make a model or write a report. In summary, PE is over generalizing and is presented in the wrong way. Sports is still important though, so don't stop exercising because of this post.

The second lesson I will talk about is Mandarin lesson. Mandarin is a compulsory language lesson in my school, and is one of the determinants of whether a student is allowed to pass or no. I am struggling in this lesson, as I have no motivation to learn it anyway. Yet again, the school has over generalized that all students should be able to speak mandarin, or master 70% of the Mandarin lessons taught. Of course, you can just say, "Well, the students should have known that this school has compulsory Mandarin lesson from the start. It's their fault for not knowing" Sure, blame the students all you want, but what if the parents chose it for them? I am not trying to mock or disparage the parents' wisdom, but people should recognize that there are other factors too. The thing is, some students are just incapable of speaking Mandarin, and they can't speak Mandarin. So, demanding them to be able to speak Mandarin is just, unfair. Of course, I am not saying Mandarin lesson should be utterly erased from the school, that would be selfish, as there are people who wants to study Mandarin. But I am saying that a certain aspect should be changed, that is all.

On other lessons, there is an over generalization to a certain extent too. Of course, there are some lessons that should be mandatory, as they are very important, such as Maths, English, Indonesian, Civics lessons, and some other lessons. But other lessons such as Physics and Biology, not everyone is interested or talented in those areas, and should be reconsidered. Anyway, I am not saying these lessons should be annihilated in any form at all, as we should not restrict the obtaining of knowledge.

Final statements

These are my claims on where the system fails, and why it is a failure. I still have some other failures I want to talk about, but that will be put in the next post. Anyway, I will not only talk about the failures, as that would mean I am just complaining, but I will propose a solution too, if it might work. This topic can and will eventually branch off to Economics, because I believe economy and education is very closely intertwined, I will also talk about religion eventually, my position on it, my ideology, what I believe, my critique on some matters. But for now, I will start with something close to home, such as education, and it is more relatable. Anyway that is it for now, give your ideas in the comments or criticize my posts, any ideas will be appreciated. Thank you for reading.