The Surprising Reason Some Students Don't Like School

2021年10月20日 by克里斯托弗·E. 纳尔逊

这篇文章最初发表于2015年8月, and has been updated for accuracy and relevancy in October 2021.

If you ask most k-12 students what they don't like about school, their lists will be lengthy. While online school students won't make the usual complaints about getting up early for long bus rides or eating cafeteria food like most kids will, 他们的清单通常包括以下项目:

但是问问认知心理学家Daniel T. Willingham the same question and you'll get a much more surprising answer:

思考  是很困难的

According to Willingham, students dislike school because thinking is hard, effortful, and slow. As he explains in his recently revised, second edition of "为什么学生不喜欢学校，思考要求学生:

Retrieve information from their immediate environment and the vast factual storehouse of their long-term memory
Combine that information in new ways in their more limited, short-term working memory
想象基于这些新组合的解决方案

So, even though they're naturally curious, students (and the rest of us, too!)会避免思考除非学习条件合适.

思考的最佳条件是什么?

The proper conditions for 学习 are the conditions or activities that allow students to experience the pleasurable rush of solving problems—whether those problems are algebra equations or 努力去理解 莎士比亚的十四行诗.

事实上, neuroscientists believe that the pleasurable rush may be the actual rush of chemicals produced by the brain’s natural reward system. Remember how it feels to get that last crossword, Sudoku, or Jeopardy answer? Well, students love that feeling of success just as much as you do.

为什么学生说“我讨厌学校??”

So, 当一个学生讨厌学校时, Willingham says what they're actually disliking are the conditions that rob thinking of its pleasure, 如:

Working on problems that are too easy or too difficult. 

If a problem is too easy, your student will get no pleasure from solving it. 如果问题看起来太难, your student will shut down the thought process because it seems to offer no pleasurable payoff. As in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” the problems have to be "just right."

Tackling problems that assume too much background knowledge.

We've all faced this one before, but think of it from a second-grader's viewpoint. 要求解决“18 × 7等于多少??" in her head, she’ll need to know not only that 8 × 7 is 56 but also the 做数学运算的程序. Lacking even one piece of required background knowledge, she'll be unable to solve the problem. If this happens often enough, you'll end up with a student who dislikes school.

Working on problems that exceed the limits of working memory.

Working memory is the limited "space" where ideas are briefly held and manipulated. It can get quickly overcrowded by "multistep instructions, 互不相关的事实列表, 超过两三步的逻辑链, and the application of a just-learned concept to new material (unless the concept is quite simple)."

As working memory becomes crowded, thinking becomes increasingly difficult. 换句话说:

家长和学习教练如何提供帮助

合作是关键. As a parent or a 推荐正规买球平台® Learning Coach in a virtual school, you're in an ideal position to know that your student becomes frustrated when assignments are too hard or bored when they're too easy. You’ll also know when 学习 conditions are "just right" for giving your online student that pleasurable rush of problem-solving success.

有了你的帮助和反馈, virtual school teachers can better understand your individual student's thought processes and help ensure the very best conditions for thinking, 学习, 喜欢学校. We hope these insights from cognitive psychology will help you support your child's education and allow you to become the best Learning Coach you can be.

Of course, there may be other reasons your teenage student doesn’t like school. 了解如何在线学校可以帮助苦苦挣扎的青少年.