Thursday, December 13, 2018
As we read Fahrenheit 451, it talks about the need for "constant entertainment." Here's part of an article I read recently by Laura Hudgens: "The real danger is that this way of thinking has shifted the responsibility of learning, and of caring about learning, from the student to the teacher. Because it isn’t just administrators and parents who believe that it is a teacher’s job to make learning fun. Kids believe it, too. As a result we have a generation of students who think that if a lesson or an assignment or a class is not interesting, if it isn’t engaging and fun and inspiring, then it simply isn’t worth caring about. They are not obligated to care about it. It’s a teacher’s job to make all learning exciting. If the teacher hasn’t lived up to her responsibility, why should the child?
In a workshop I recently attended, teachers were told that kids are so attracted to video games because of the constant feedback – the progress, praise and prizes. We were encouraged to design our instruction more like a video game. How else can we expect to hold their attention?
That is a frightening mentality because it has created a generation of consumer learners. Many students don’t see education as a privilege. They see it as a product. And if they don’t like the salesperson, if they aren’t impressed with how it’s packaged, they aren’t buying. But our kids have to learn to be self-motivated because at some point in every person’s life, either at school or in a job or in a marriage, he or she will have to buck up and say, “This is hard. This is boring. I don’t want to do this. But I’m doing it anyway. And I’ll do my best.” https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article81668307.html?fbclid=IwAR3g_Gkm56VL2om_8ZLGDpNMHfvxzu83S3ZS-ZCHZipDXO1cIO-jzckyP8g
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