A proposal for education reform in the US

None the less, teachers biggest complaints, and the most time consuming portion of their days come from disciplining teenagers in their behavior, and from trying to entertain them, or enthrall them in some way with the material they are trying to pass on. All this effort from teachers comes from the need to overcome the students lack of active interest, and desire to learn the material.

Luckily, we already know how to motivate adults. Our culture runs on it, and it is a system with natural checks and balances, so it's self regulating: $Money$

Now we're back to motivation again. Who is motivated to fund something which we are reasonably sure will improve society and help our kids?

This one's easy: We are. We the parents, we the corporations, we the government, we the civilization. All benefit from this change.

This may or may not be true however. Certainly teachers do complain about kids that are discipline problems but what is the actual time spent dealing with them? Also, what % of the kids are the discipline problems? A teacher might spend a lot of time dealing with dispipline but it may only be on a small portion of the total number of students. One single student can easliy disrupt a class of 30. If that is the case then this all seems like a pretty massive system to deal with a small % of students.

Maslow's studies found that money is actually a very poor long term motivator. It works in a very short term but as time progresses performing an act for money loses it's "value". This is why we have people in seemingly well paying jobs that still quit those jobs.

In a setting like a school I think you'd find that these "rewards" for good performance would be considered an entitlement and people would demand them regardless of their performance level. That may not happen immediately but with a few years you'd have parents suing the school because they didn't get their check. Parents have been known to argue over Johhny getting a C+ in a class instead of a B- because it keeps Johnny off of the honor roll. What happens when that C+ means there is no $2000 check in the mail?

This may all be true enough too but you didn't specify where the money would come from. Is there an implicit assumption here that people would be willing to have their taxes increased to pay into these trusts? You are talking about a change to the system that isn't going to show any tangible results for 8-12 years. You could make a case that the kids would be better educated at that future point (assuming it all works as you outlined..) so they'd earn more, be more productive, etc.. and the government would be able to take the increased tax revenue and use that but the government isn't going to see that increase for a decade or two. How is it paid for in the mean time?

Another side issue and possible result of all of this would also be an increased inflation rate. This is the same issue that has to be dealt with with the whole "living wage" idea. If your idea was implemented and worked those future workers would be able to demand a higher wage. That increases the cost to business as an employer which gets passed on in higher costs for teh end product to the consumer. Since they also are paid at a higher rate other businesses can increase their prices without suffering a loss in business. In the end the net increase in wages is usually offset by a proportional increase in expenses so there is no net gain for the worker.

I'm not saying that a system as you propose can't work. It does set in motion a whole chain of events though and each of the steps in that chain would have to be looked at.

One of the interesting effects of the type of change I'm proposing is that it will have the greatest impact in school districts with the lowest income levels. And I would suggest that it's in exactly these areas where the greatest challenges to education are felt.

Also, I'm not just hoping to affect those students who are being a discipline problem, but also those who are simply in a malaise due to social pressures which overwhelm education. My feeling is that with active parent participation, kids will begin to be more confident in themselves, and that this will benefit their social success as they go through their early teens.

I think those studies noted a difference between making a "lot" of money, and making "enough" money to help you survive. For someone who wants to buy a bigger yacht, it may not make a difference, but in those cases where money helps feed a family and pay rent, I bet you will find a lot of motivation.

Yes, and another good chance to improve the system. Educational standards will have to be put in place to define exactly what level of performance gets what reward. But standards of this type are what most people are saying we need already. This looks to me like more of an opportunity to improve things.

Yes, you caught me. I was implying that corporations would somehow contribute to the process since the results directly benefit them, and I was implying that government funds which are currently used in inefficient ways might find more effective returns when diverted to this methodology.

Possibly true, but I'm inclined to take the chance of this happening in light of a more educated population. After all, the same argument could have been made two hundred years ago, but things are better now than they were (unless you prefer an agrarian culture to a technological culture).

I can see that this idea is going to be difficult to sell. There are too many assumptions which are not backed up by data. And there are too many unknown effects from a change like this.

How does one go about trying to make significant change in any type of large scale embedded social system?

Explain what you mean by the flow experience, the title of your earlier book.

Flow describes the spontaneous, effortless experience you achieve when you have a close match between a high level of challenge and the skills you need to meet the challenge. Flow happens when a person is completely involved in the task, is concentrating very deeply, and knows moment by moment what the next steps should be. If you're playing music, you know what note will come next, and you know how to play that note. You have a goal and you are getting feedback. The experience is almost addictive and very rewarding.

Small children are in flow most of the time as they learn to walk and talk and other new things. They choose what to do and they match their skills with challenges. Unfortunately, they begin to lose this feeling once they go to school because they can't choose their goals and they can't choose the level at which they operate. They become increasingly passive. We find that in Europe and the United States, about 15 percent of adults really can't remember any experience that seems like flow. A similar proportion, about 15 percent, claim that they have the flow experience several times a day.

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What family characteristics are most conducive to inspiring a love of learning?

Modeling is the best strategy. If the kid grows up seeing that his parents and other adults have no interest in anything except making money, it's unlikely that he or she will learn that it's fun to study or learn new things.

It boils down to the essentials: support and challenge. By challenge I mean high expectations, high standards, allowing the child a lot of independence, exposing students to new opportunities whenever possible. Support means simply that the child feels that the family as a whole is interested in every member's welfare. If the mother comes home tired, the kids will notice it and try to help her and so forth.

When their families give them both support and challenge, children are more likely to choose harder subjects in high school, get better grades, end up in better colleges, and have higher self-esteem in college or after college. If they receive support only, the kids tend to be happy and feel better about themselves, but they're not necessarily ambitious. They don't try to advance in school. They don't take harder classes.

If the family offers a lot of challenges but does not provide support, then the kids tend to do well in school, but they're not very happy. And if they have neither support nor challenge from the family, then it's bad all around. Support and challenge impart different strengths. Challenge gives children vision and direction, focus and perseverance. Support gives the serenity that allows them freedom from worry and fear.

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Of all the students you interviewed, do any stand out as special examples?

Hundreds. One could write a shelf of novels on the lives of these kids.

There was a boy from Kansas City who, at age 12, was really in bad shape. He hated school. He had nothing that he liked. His self-esteem was low. He was in trouble with the school. We thought he would end up having serious trouble.

Then, in his senior year, when we looked at his booklet, we noticed that he had completely changed. He was happy. He felt strong self-esteem. He'd write that he was especially happy when he was looking for a valve or pipes at the hardware store or when he was carrying some rocks to his truck. When he was doing these things, he felt really positive. And we couldn't understand what he was talking about.

In the interviews, we asked him, What is this about looking for a valve or carrying rocks? He told us that he had a business building koi ponds. At some time in his junior year, he saw one of these Japanese fishponds in somebody's garden, and he became so fascinated that he built one in his own yard and one for his neighbor. And then he started building ponds commercially. At age 18, he bought a panel truck for his koi pond business. And he felt tremendous. He had to learn everything from plumbing to biology: how the fish live and what to feed them. He learned chemistry. He learned mathematics to understand water pressure and volume. Senior year he did great in school. He ended up going to a community college and taking technical courses. That is what can happen when a kid makes a connection between something inside and an opportunity outside. To me, that's how education should be. To educate means to lead out. And we don't lead kids out. We kind of stop them. To educate is to expose kids to many possibilities until they find a connection between what's really important to them and the world out there. And then we must nurture and cultivate that connection.

I know of many innovative school programs that are doing just that, and I would be interested in examining what works and why, and then attempting to replicate those programs on a larger scale. I think that would address many of the core issues while also being much more cost effective.

Soze,

Do you think that most kids will appreciate the esoteric value of "flow" as mentioned by Csikszentmihalyi when they enter their English class to discuss the latest book assignment which they haven't read?

Soze, it sounds like you're saying that most teachers fail to teach in an effective way. Yet what I hear from the teachers I know, is that they are unable to teach the bulk of students who are too distracted by external events to want to learn.