Vladimir Borzenko. You won't be nice by force

You won't be nice by force
Approaches to the problem of motivation at school

Vladimir Borzenko

Publication date: December 14, 2000

Anyone who has ever fed an unhungry child unsweetened porridge will agree that the issue of motivation is one of the most significant: getting him to eat what and when you want/consider necessary requires enormous ingenuity and a significant expenditure of nervous and physical strength . Simply put, it's practically impossible. Therefore, experienced parents try to study the tastes and habits of the child as much as possible and organize the process so that he eats as willingly as possible. In the most diverse areas of human life, problems of “feeding” arise.

So, for example, shortly before the start of perestroika, a new name appeared in the then poorly differentiated environment of the Moscow intelligentsia : Tatyana Zaslavskaya . One of the ideas associated with this name was that the economic reforms carried out in our country in the post-war years were, in a certain sense, flawed and doomed in advance, since for the reform to be successful, the interest of certain social strata in it is necessary. It is not enough to make a decision; its implementation must also be beneficial to someone. It is not enough to develop a new indicator; one must also ensure the reliability of the data obtained. Otherwise, “everything will be as always”: the economic situation will not improve, and corruption will increase. In connection with the awareness of this simple fact at a fairly high party level, a public opinion research service began to be created in the country, which has now flourished so magnificently. Thus, in the public consciousness, perhaps for the first time, the question of the true motivation of subjects of economic activity emerged.

Around the same period, the book “Language and Children” by E.I. appeared. Negnevitskaya and A.M. Shakhnarovich, which became an event among foreign language teachers who worked with preschoolers. The main idea was that to successfully work with children, “global motivation” in terms of the long-term perspective of communicating with foreigners is not enough, but that thoughtful local motivation for the child’s speech activity during the lesson is necessary.

In both examples given, deliberately taken from such different areas where we are talking about the problem of motivation, what is surprising is how fresh and non-trivial such seemingly obvious things sounded. Apparently, the reason lies in the fact that the “administrative-command” approach to management and, in particular, to training dominated in society.

However, in the grand scheme of things, it would be a stretch to present the formulation of the problem of motivation as big news. A striking historical example of a wise attitude to the problem of motivation is the Jewish tradition. Thus, in the rite of passage of the Passover meal, among other comments that are remarkable from a pedagogical point of view, one deserves special attention: women are invited to persuade one of the younger children to secretly steal part of the afikoman (a piece of matzoh that has ritual significance) in order to then return it to the head of the meal for a certain amount of time. ransom It is directly stated that this is done to maintain the attention and interest of the children at the proper level, since one of the main goals of the action is to tell all children and household members in as much detail and intelligibility as possible about how God “by His mercy, and not by our merits, brought us out of the world.” many signs and wonders from the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage." In the rite itself and in the basic comments to it there is a whole series of similar motivational and pedagogical moments, amazing in their psychological accuracy.

On the other hand, interesting processes have been reflected in Western psychotherapeutic literature in recent years: treatment based on symptoms began to be called the day before yesterday; the individual psychoanalytic approach is a thing of the past, since in this case the patient was still interpreted as an object of influence; Methods such as group therapy and others were proclaimed modern, where patients became full-fledged subjects of therapy, whom the specialist only trained and supported. We are talking about the methods of Ericksonian hypnosis and the methods of Moreno psychodrama , from which all modern, with a history of approximately twenty to thirty years, adaptation methods such as group therapy, systems of empathy and NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) came from. Nowadays, such methods are widely and successfully implemented in groups of “alcoholics anonymous”, “drug addicts” and other people with “psychological problems”.

There is no doubt that the described trends are connected with the ideas of personalist philosophers (such as E. Mounier , G. Marcel , M. Buber , etc.), who argued that a sovereign personality should under no circumstances serve as an object of influence, and who called for “dialogue” within any human activity. It is known that at present the influence of these ideas in Europe is very great (see, for example, “Personalism” by E. Mounier, M.: Art, 1992).

It seems that it is in this direction that our school could develop, especially since it fits perfectly with the Russian Orthodox tradition. In particular, in many ways the ideas of the personalists were anticipated by V. Solovyov at the end of the last century. One could object, and not without reason, in the sense that so far, alas, there are no or practically no people in our schools who can talk to children like human beings, think about them, and not drill them. And the problem is not only a lack of personnel, but the fact that those who are available still cannot do much. However, we will try to propose an approach to a kind of “energy-saving technologies”, especially relevant in an era of total shortage of social resources.

Having started from afar, let us now try to correlate the ideas and trends described above with the problems of our school. Let's be honest: the issue of motivation seems to us to be the main problem of teaching, in comparison with which all the others are, perhaps, less dramatic, especially if we take into account the acute shortage of pedagogical resources, which does not allow us to hope for an effective fight against the interests of schoolchildren. This question is especially difficult, since it is inextricably linked with our general social circumstances, the crisis in the prestige of science and culture, and the current lack of traditional respect for school and culture in general.

Nevertheless, something can be done even at the level of the individual teacher or school, although it would probably be more fun if adequate attention was paid to issues of motivation at a higher level.

First of all, no matter how trivial it may sound, it is useful to simply constantly try to look at the processes of communication and learning through the eyes of a particular student, try to understand and take into account his interests as much as possible. Among special pedagogical means, valuable results are provided by essays (preferably anonymous) on topics like “what do I want to become/what do I want from school/history lessons, etc.” Another great opportunity is a school-based public opinion monitoring service. Such a service can equally successfully cover both, say, in-school ratings of popular artists, and very serious issues of school life, including academic ones. Our experience shows that schoolchildren really enjoy writing and discussing essays, participating in surveys as interviewers or respondents: children love it when someone is interested in their opinion. This allows teachers not only to receive valuable information from the original source, but also to encourage schoolchildren to realize their preferences, i.e. increase their learning motivation.

On the other hand, it is useful to involve high school students in decisions regarding the content of the “school component” and other educational issues. The main thing is that children not only understand in principle, but also constantly feel that teachers are not their enemies, that it is possible and necessary to negotiate with them, that to a large extent our goals are common, since they are formed as a result of dialogue, and not school administrative dictate. It is especially important to take into account that children, as a rule, do not yet know how to defend their interests in a civilized manner and need help in developing this important skill. This is like in a normal democracy: the majority should be interested in ensuring that the opinion of the minority is heard and taken into account, the authorities must ensure the normal functioning of the opposition, voluntarily concede some rights to it - and not because there is not enough strength to suppress discontent, but so that they themselves it was not disgusting to live in such a society.

But the question of motivation can be posed more broadly: in terms of the relationship between teachers and schools and higher-level organizations. So far, it often turns out that schools are not interested in the normal educational process. Let's give an example. As part of monitoring the work of schools, more and more new indicators are appearing, based on the grades that the schools themselves assign to their students. Here is a new thing: “level of training”, which is defined as follows: “the number of students studying by 5, multiplied by 100, the number of students by 4 - multiplied by 64, the number of students by 3 - multiplied by 36, the number of students by 2 - multiply by 12, then add all products and divide by the total number of students in the class."

Without discussing the scientific value and validity of this kind of formulas, we will only note that healthy demands on students and fair assessment of their work again come into conflict with the reluctance to have problems in the district. After all, there are more objective indicators of school quality, such as the number of children leaving and the number of people willing to transfer to it. Maybe if the school suits the majority of students and their parents, it is worth relaxing detailed control based on dubious indicators and unreliable data? Isn't there some sort of anti-motivation going on here?

It would probably also be advisable to vary the share of the school component more flexibly in cases where the integrity of the school as a whole is not in doubt. So, for example, in the 11th grade it would make sense to reduce the list of compulsory subjects to a minimum. In fact, if a student is going to enter, say, a philology department, and puts enormous effort into preparing, is it reasonable to force him to study chemistry and geometry at the same time? Doesn't this lead in most cases to profanation? Apparently, in the 11th grade, at least for those who studied normally in the 10th, maximum freedom of choice in the disciplines studied can be allowed, even with a constant total number of “attendance hours.” Otherwise, the future brilliant student and just a malicious truant find themselves at the same time in the fight against school rules and administration.

The mutual resource thus freed can be directed to in-depth training of those interested in specialized subjects. In some cases, such additional classes could be made even slightly paid for students - this could increase the motivation of both teachers and schoolchildren: experience shows that the attitude towards paid classes among children - even if these are music or sports classes - can be as follows: usually more conscientious and interested than free ones. Of course, payment is a separate and rather delicate issue, but working with children in general requires flexibility and delicacy.

From all that has been said, we can draw the following conclusion: maximum consideration of the true, and not fake, interests of schoolchildren is the most important factor that makes learning more effective and enjoyable. This factor is significant in general, but is especially critical in the current conditions of an acute shortage of social resources, when the modest forces of domestic pedagogy can be wasted in a senseless struggle with the completely normal interests and needs of students.