Interest is Everything

My academic career, before I got to college, was all over the place. Throughout the years my record was checkered with a pretty equal distribution of Cs and Bs with a handful of Ds and a couple As here and there, which were almost exclusively in my English classes. I was barely a mediocre student. Although my grades would lead one to believe otherwise, I truly loved to learn and I spent a lot of time outside of school researching, reading, and writing about whatever caught my interest. After a brief unit in 7th grade I was interested in Greek Mythology and read all sorts of books on the subject and spent hours imagining what life in that time period was all about. I put in extra effort into my school work during that unit and wrote essays twice as long as those of my peers because I found the subject so fascinating. During this unit, you could not pull me away from my homework.

When history brought us to the Salem Witchcraft Trials, my eyes were glued to the history channel documentaries everyone else suffered through in class and I went out of my way to read novel after novel about witchcraft and magic and I even pulled out the Encyclopedias to read what they had to say about it all. I have always had a hunger for knowledge but my motivation is born out of interest. When something sparks my interest, all I want to do is read, write, and talk about it. I get so consumed by subjects sometimes that I could spend three days straight locked in my room doing nothing but studying and it is as if no time has gone by. Unfortunately, during those researching binges, the math textbooks and the chemistry worksheets were left neglected in my backpack. I just couldn’t bear to tear myself from the story I was writing, or my beloved mythology book. And when I did attempt to pound out the answers to my math homework, I rushed through them as quickly as possible, often asking friends to copy their answers just so I could get back to my own intellectual pursuits.

Now, I’m not saying that math is not important, because as a researcher, I love and appreciate statistics, now. And I am so thankful for my ability to calculate percentages when I go out to dinner or figure out the sale prices when I’m shopping. What I am saying is that I think there is a better way to teach these skills that is more enjoyable for both teachers and students that is less like trying to pull teeth from a violently terrified child. It wasn’t that I was bad at math either, I was actually quite good at it until algebra happened and I could no longer understand why it was important for me to keep learning it when there were so many more interesting things I could have been studying. Somewhere between 6th and 8th grades, math lost its relevance in my life and thus my interest went right along with it. Simply solving equation after equation, just to find the answer added no noticeable value to my life except that it might earn me a better grade. But to me, grades were just not a strong enough motivator to get me to put down the stories I was reading and writing and focus on something that seemed like little more than a waste of time.

There are many students out there, we all know a few, who are highly motivated by grades, but are these students really learning more about the subjects they are “studying” or are they simply trying to please their teachers and parents, fearful of breaking the social mores of the achievement culture in which we live? This is the kind of learning our system of education currently encourages, just getting things done with all the right answers on tests and homework assignments regardless of what learning actually takes place. Ask most teachers and they will tell you, they would rather their students actually learn, but unfortunately this standardized model of education we have moved towards is in direct contradiction with actual learning. What does it matter how a student scores on a test if everything he learned is forgotten within a few weeks or months of completion?

It may sound cliche, but learning really is about the process rather than the product (ie. grade) and in order to motivate students to really learn, their interests need to be sparked. And we as a society ought to be in favor of such intrinsically motivating educational programs, like the ones that Alfie Kohn and Ken Robinson suggest (the Project Approach, Reggio Emilia and Montessori inspired programs, and the Studio model are great examples). When students are interested, not only do they learn more (and thus accomplish more), but they increase their confidence because they are met with greater success and increase their chances of finding an authentic career. If everyone was able to find the kind of work that they both excelled at and enjoyed, imagine what we as a people could accomplish.

Interest is one of the greatest motivators and unfortunately it is far too often left out of the equation when we discuss education reform. Improvement does not need to be complicated. Allow students more say in what they are learning, how they go about learning it, and how to best represent their knowledge and we will all be amazed by the result. Of course this is not even close to everything I have to say on the subject of interest, or on education reform, but for now, I will leave you to imagine how school might have been different for you, had you been allowed more room to pursue your own intellectual interests and have more of a say in your education. I know for me, it wouldn’t have taken me until college to realize how much I love learning.