Are some kids born to hate school?

Yes
Steven Reiss:
Underachievers are a fact of life in schools

Educators make too many diagnoses of learning disability, attention-deficit disorder and underachievement. In fact, there may be nothing wrong with the child who is not trying hard in school.

Not being interested in school can be as normal as lacking interest in sports or in the arts. Children who lack a desire for learning do not need to be diagnosed, given drugs or psychotherapy. These conclusions are based on surveys of the basic desires and values of more than 6,000 adolescents and adults, The results of these studies show that the basic desire to learn, called curiosity, varies significantly in intensity from one individual to the next. This variation seems to be genetic in origin because curiosity often is aroused automatically in a stimulus-response fashion. It is seen in animals, and has survival advantages.

The key to understanding underachievement is to realize that intelligence, or the ability to do well in school, is different from curiosity, which is the desire to learn. Some are smart but were born to hate school. They have the potential to get good grades but lack the potential to enjoy learning. They become underachievers not because they lack ability but because they lack interest.

Educators use a number of labels for children who do not apply themselves in school. These children were diagnosed as "underachievers" in the 1960s, "learning disabled" in the 1970s, "attention deficit disorder" in the 1980s, and "extrinsically motivated" in the 1990s. Some advise giving drugs to combat what they think is an underlying depression or developmental disorder. Although underachievement is sometimes a sign of a deeper problem, often it reflects normal individual variation in the potential to enjoy learning.

I do not advocate "anything goes" when it comes to school work, however. Failure and dropping out are not okay.

My concern is that we stop making underachievement a disorder or medical problem. We do not need to invent more labels, such as the idea of an "extrinsically motivated" child. Certainly teachers and parents need to take reasonable steps to motivate school children, but diagnostic labels, drugs and therapy need not become part of the response when a student's only problems are a lack of curiosity and underachievement.

That some kids hate school is undeniable. That this hatred is inborn--or that it extends to learning itself--is preposterous. The latter assumption is also suspiciously convenient to educators who would rather not examine how students' negative feelings may be a reasonable response to how they are being taught and treated.

"Of all the vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influence on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences." The British philosopher John Stuart Mill said that a century and a half ago, but perhaps it needs to be said again.

It's bad enough that kids' difficulties in school are so casually attributed to innate deficiencies and disorders. Now we find someone who wants to attribute kids' lack of interest in school to an innate lack of curiosity. A far more plausible hypothesis is that they simply lack interest in multiplying naked numbers or reading the sodden prose of a textbook and answering the even-numbered questions at the end of the chapter or memorizing disconnected facts and definitions for a test.

Consider three kinds of evidence for my alternative hypothesis. First, everyday experience tells us that young children's thirst for making sense of the world is a force to be reckoned with: They ask "why?" continually, notice things we take for granted, insist on decoding every sign in sight when first mastering the printed word. Quite honestly, I don't think I've ever met a child who lacks the desire to figure things out, to find the answers to personally relevant questions--in short, to learn.

Second, research by Susan Harter, Mark Lepper and other psychologists has found that this universal curiosity tends to trail off sharply during elementary school, at least in the United States--right around the time that artificial inducements such as stickers and grades begin to kick in.

Third, when bored students are moved to the kind of classroom where their questions and interests drive the course of study, where hands-on projects replace a diet of lectures and worksheets, and where the students feel part of a caring community of learners, the change in students' demeanor (and feelings about school) is dramatic. If you've ever seen a refugee from a "bunch o' facts" classroom who is now at work on a project that he or she helped design, you know that the problem is neither innate nor a function of too little curiosity.

Of course not all kids have the same degree of interest in any given topic. And, of course, some kids live in homes that make it hard for them to learn. But the problem with reluctant students is usually more about compliance than about motivation. Give all students the chance to explore, and it is hard to stop them from learning.

American Federation of Teachers, AFL•CIO - 555 New Jersey Avenue, NW - Washington, DC 20001