Self Determination and Educational Foundation

What would happen if school was a place to help students excel at anything they chose to do?

Since the first humans, a concern for learning and a thirst to understand the world has been very prominent. As civilizations rose from the ground, primitive governments emerged and systems of working communities were constructed. It quickly came apparent that a deep comprehension of the earth and how it worked was satisfying, powerful, and greatly enhanced the quality of life. Babylon, Greece and Rome are all good examples of this. Travel through time and  you would see the importance of knowledge in the lives of humans. It shaped society, created and resolved conflict, was manipulated and abused by governments and private industries, unlocked secrets, solved problems, and exponentially increased the progress of human existence. In early monarchies, education was a tool to enslave the subjects of the system. For examples of this, look to the English church during the middle ages. As American democracy was implemented to secure certain rights, it was decided upon that a public education system ought to be erected. Founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson held education highly, and decided that if all men (white male landowners at the time) were created equal, they all should have the right to learn, invent and turn their life around as the American dream implies. After all, knowledge is freedom, which human rights aim to secure. This ultimately benefited society as a whole. This wasn’t instantaneous, but evolved over the course of the country's development. Fast forward to the present, where such a system as described is set in place: Liberal education, available to just about anyone. Look closer and you find that inside each of these schools, a base curriculum, decided upon by the state and in some cases the federal government, is distributed to the community. From kindergarten to high school, a fairly linear system is set in place. Options slowly expand based on ability and desire, but still the scope of possibilities remains set in the same hallway. Classes can be selected based on personal inclinations, albeit certain requirements are fulfilled. Why is this? The system currently set in place is a rudimentary, prescriptive solution to the problems observed in education. It is grounded on the ideas that children don’t wish to learn or create, that humans intrinsically need something external to spur them to action. The truth is however, this is only necessary when you apply the linear learning process described above. The ideas that consecrate its foundation and the methods to reverse those are incompatible. Because of this, rather than achieving reparation, it results in entrenching the very problems it attempts to address. So here is an invitation to look at the brain, the biology and functions behind it, and discover that provision of autonomy in the public education system ultimately increases its effectiveness.

It’s no secret that choice in projects is an exciting aspect. Relate it to your own experience. The ability to personalize an endeavor is an extremely motivating thing. You’ll also find that as you indulge in a subjective choice goal that you care more about it leads to it being proliferated further, in place of dropping it as soon as you get a grade or the reward you really wanted out of it, because the reward you desire is the project itself. The school plays a role in this of course, but it’s much less compulsory. The funding provided will instead be used to aid, enable and excel students in whatever path they choose. Comparing these methods will ultimately prove that more autonomy improves the education system and its goals. These concepts work as a loose canvas to be thrown over a framework of any sort.

Choice is motivating.4,5 Relating it to yourself and past experiences, it should be quite obvious that when you are in control, you care more. Many adults can probably remember graduation; that must have been a validating experience. The future was in your palms; no more parents, legal constraints and no more responsibility for anyone but yourself and the excess you create. Whilst daunting, the majority probably felt optimistic and intrigued by the future, ready to pilot it and become what they wanted to be. Unfortunately, cognitive biases would probably make you believe this whether or not it was true, thus distorting that warrant. So to the science!

First, a neurological concept as a base framework needs to be understood. The brain has a built in reward center. It makes you feel happy when you do something it likes. Eat food? Dopamine. Spend time with a cute girl/boy? More dopamine. Do something exciting? Even more dopamine. This developed to incentivize organisms to do things that make them more likely to survive and ultimately reproduce. Direct awarding of certain behaviors is widely known by the scientific community as intrinsic rewards.2 This could be analogized and related to your life by things you enjoy. When you actualize, work or accomplish something, you feel good about it. These kinds of rewards are much more powerful and effective. They create more enthusiasm, dedication and integral care that is necessary for a goals completion.

Often times however, there are things that need to be done that aren’t quite so enjoyable. Consider working at McDonalds. For the bulk of the human population, working at McDonalds sucks. Even in spite of this, quite a few work at McDonalds and other such jobs of similar characteristics. This is because of a simple green slips of paper known as money. Working at these low lined jobs is only tolerated because of extrinsic rewards.2 Almost everyone mindlessly toiling away logging orders does so because of the rewards they gain from it which they can use to gain intrinsic rewards. This money is then spent at college, for education, at similar food joints for food, and at shady card shops on the corner of the street for Magic the Gathering cards.

The current education system is based upon these extrinsic rewards. Along with punishments such as social judgement and ridicule, revoking of privileges, and reduced future opportunities, those who perform well gain all of these rewards in place of loosing them in conjunction with the knowledge they supposedly gain. It is built upon the idea that children won’t learn and aren’t interested in the world and how it works, but the truth is it’s only the case because school turns discovery, passion, and self-determination into a circus, a place where those competent can gain the rewards and climb to the top, and those who aren’t as capable fall to the bottom and adopt apathy, a despise for what they can’t accomplish, and a social sticker which displays them as the stupid, imbecilic and the dross of society.3 This happens mainly because of the blurred definition of learning, the crude grade system and most importantly, the mainstream subjects and facts time is spent drilling into students minds.

Observing the ancestral environment however, this wasn’t how it used to be. Children explored the world, learned and grew naturally as they interacted with the world around them.1 They have a natural excitement to develop, and whether or not you believe it developed evolutionarily, it certainly exists today. Instead of this freelance exploration system catered to how brains have been designed however, institutions which deliver homogeneous curriculum are quite prominent across the globe, massing children into intellectual carbon copies of each other. It’s ineffective, and favors independent kids who are above average. The overall point is that autonomy is much better at driving humans.5 Inner push doesn’t fade with the grade or the sticker or the cash.

Lightly touched on above was autonomy’s ability to increase diversity. Humans are all very different in desires, personalities and goals. Given the tools and means to accelerate at a personal pace to applicable spires of accomplishment will ensure that education is never bottle-necked to mean something it isn’t. What truly drives the desire to learn and care out is how streamlined it is. Assume a hypothetical child hates biology. When learning means biology, something that a student only does to gain an extrinsic reward, they won’t learn biology. They’ll do what they need under that class and field of study to get what they need, then discard it. The class isn’t worth it anyway, even if the state or whoever writes the standards of education thinks it is. Along the way however, unwanted enthusiasm draining baggage is collected, hurting said students ability to work to achieve other academic goals. Famously put: “Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid” Why waste time forcing people to do things they don’t want to do and aren’t good at? An advocate of the system would tell you: “If children can learn whatever they please, how will they learn the important things?” What this fails to realize is quite obvious however. As pupils specialize with a certain end goal in mind, a common core selects itself. What they need to learn will be learned, and happily too, because it relates to their end goal, or at least one of them. By creating learning standards each child, no matter how they differ mentally, it deprives them of confidence, care for the matter, and ultimately love for learning.

Two very important things have been highlighted here. The first is that the current system disincentivizes work, taints learning's definition, and interrupts diversity. The second is that autonomy is a superior motivational tool. This is the case because you can’t force anyone to do anything. Those who slack under the proposed system won’t get much more out of the current. An extrinsic reward means that the knowledge is no longer relevant, as it was only a means to an end. When choice is available, it excites us, is meaningful, and sticks permanently. This leads to an end which is desirable and specific, selecting a subjective framework that differs from everyone else's.

As school provides a medium for students to move through and reveal the secrets they enjoy and don’t, from kindergarten to college, it creates a cone. They’re interest starts wide and slowly specifies the farther they and their knowledge advance. This is the opposite of the system which currently grants more options the farther and more developed kids are expected to be. By that point however, the autonomy and excitement in learning has been institutionalized and deterred to now mean something entirely different. Intellectualism becomes no longer a practice, but a talent to gain certain rewards. At this point the impacts of the first argument have already been set in place, next to irreversible. Thus it ought to be nurtured early. When this occurs and is supported at younger ages, the autonomy to discover not only leads to diverse projects which are meaningful, but the educational results could be unfathomable. When obtaining an educational goal is the value, everything is invested into it, because they care and that is the only way to gain the reward. This doesn’t exist with extrinsic rewards in education.

Consider salary. Whilst people are certainly consistently motivated to be rich and continue to grow their income, they do so to purchase things they love, as was explained. But rather, why not simply do what you love instead of working in a dead-end job you hate? The answer is always money to secure basic needs. Whilst there are many hypothetical government and economy systems theorized to solve this problem, whether they work properly or not isn’t the important thing for this point. The point is that in fact, grades are quite similar. Why not learn about things interesting to you? The answer is simple: Because that is time not spent getting good grades. Failing school leads to all the undesirable problems discussed above, involving limitations on future, social repercussions and hurt self confidence. So instead time is spent on unappreciated aspects, subjects and assignments which blur the future and condition the brain to hate education. In the end, betraying neurological desires implodes, and very few make it out with determination to care about contribution to society. Two very similar problems, but only the one with economic relevance is being discussed.

So what is the school’s role? Surely they can contribute something. This question has been briefly and sporadically addressed throughout, but here are a few more concrete answers. Culturally, mentors are extremely enabling.7 By providing teachers from versatile backgrounds, the goal can be for them to enable, aid and advise. People around ought to serve as mentors, optional support and available teachers.5 The framework is loose, but more autonomy can certainly be provided, and is definitely needed. That is to say that there is no strict way to enforce this system. It can be adapted quite easily to meet certain needs and problems that arise. For example, exposure is a key part of the proposed educational system. Thus, optional specific classes can be provided for those who aren’t ready to specialize. Extrinsic rewards can still exist, but ought to be simply an extra incentive to explore and discover, not a way to segregate, demoralize or take precedence over the wonders of education. Along with allowing for autonomy, motivation ought to be taught and nurtured for these things, not forced. Finally, and the most important, is to build one identical, straight across standard: A love and appreciation for learning, how versatile it is, what it truly means, and how it can be used to benefit and enhance lives.

In a quick summary to send you off with, the current public education system propagates a mental attitude which disincentivizes learning, obscures its true definition and turns instructive processes into talent shows that divide students into social hierarchies which deter them from achieving more than they psychologically feel worth. The motivational arrangement is ineffective; those who don’t want to won’t, those who do want to are bottlenecked to specific subjects and won’t either, selecting a handful of people, completely destroying the very foundation a public education was constructed upon in the first place. This therefore should be replaced with a system which appreciates learning and enables personal subjective growth to maximum intrinsic inclinations to learn and indulge in the world and solving its many mysteries in any way shape or form.

Finally, you the reader, save you disagree, have an obligation. With this knowledge comes the ability for you to spread it. Political change doesn’t just happen, and with a certain dream in sight, advocating for it becomes the next step. As a person whose mind has hopefully changed, your thoughts and actions ought to speak for it. This can be as simple as sharing material related to this with friends, discussing it and fighting for it outside of your own head all the way to as far as making public comments at your city councils, messaging your state office of education and influencing others around you to do the same. Everything counts, but start somewhere.

Cited Works:

1. Blöser, C., Schöpf, A., & Willaschek, M.. (2010). Autonomy, Experience, and Reflection. On a Neglected Aspect of Personal Autonomy. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 13(3), 239–253. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40835328

2. McCombs, B. L.. (1991). Overview: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going in Understanding Human Motivation?. The Journal of Experimental Education, 60(1), 5–14. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20152308

3. Mills, R. C.. (1991). A New Understanding of Self: The Role of Affect, State of Mind, Self-Understanding, and Intrinsic Motivation. The Journal of Experimental Education, 60(1), 67–81. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20152312

4. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-76. doi:10.1037/h0101523

5. Ryan, R. M., & Powelson, C. L.. (1991). Autonomy and Relatedness as Fundamental to Motivation and Education. The Journal of Experimental Education, 60(1), 49–66. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20152311

6. Weiner, I. B., & Craighead, W. E. (2010). The Corsini encyclopedia of psychology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

7. Whisler, J. S.. (1991). The Impact of Teacher Relationships and Interactions on Self-Development and Motivation. The Journal of Experimental Education, 60(1), 15–30. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20152309