tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458172893016186479.post8833088172128198140..comments2024-03-09T03:28:44.216-05:00Comments on Thoughts on Education Policy: How to spend $100 millionCorey Bunje Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09764159604965707919noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458172893016186479.post-81524078870159887532010-10-01T20:27:12.347-04:002010-10-01T20:27:12.347-04:00First, I don't buy the argument that motivatio...<i>First, I don't buy the argument that motivation is a humongous problem in education.</i><br /><br />I was going to strenuously disagree until I read the next sentence. I agree that there are not a whole lot of seriously unmotivated "teachers, principals, administrators, etc." But (at least in high school) motivation is a tremendous problem when it comes to students. Put simply, most students aren't very interested in most of what they are supposed to learn.<br /><br />There is a character in Isaac Asimov's Foundation stories called The Mule. He is physically slight but he has the power to reach into people's minds and change what they want to do. (He is, in a sense, the opposite of the Jim Carrey character in <i>Bruce Almighty</i>.)<br /><br />I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be The Mule on the first day of school and make my high school science students want to learn physics and chemistry. My guess is that we would cover about three times as much as we actually do, and they would be pushing me instead of me pushing them.<br /><br />Robert Samuelson recently had an interesting column on motivation:<br />http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/05/AR2010090502817.htmlRoger Sweenyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12734128265493099062noreply@blogger.com