When I was a kid, I always love the feeling I get when I receive a medal from school. I love hearing the praises that my mother would say after our recognition day. My father would make sure I get a Jolly Spaghetti reward whenever I get high grades or whenever I make it to the top 10. Because of that, I strived to stay on top, get high scores on my exams, win contests and quiz bees. Anything that could make my parents proud.
That's normal for a kid. Every child wants to please their parents. Every kid seeks their approval. And so, they strive to be the best. Have you noticed how a kindergartener would proudly show the star that their teacher stamped on them to their parent? If you observed a classroom full of kindergarten kids, each one of them speaks loud, raises their arms, shouts "Teacher, Teacher, me! Me! I know the answer!" And when they do get the answer, their teacher will then say "Very good!" then they'll get a star.
This desire to be recognized not only by their parents is natural to children. Educators though make use of this desire as a motivation for children to study. It's simple and easy. You perform well in class - ace the exams, recite the memory works, behave properly - you get high grades. You get high grades, you get a medal. Sound like an effective system, right?
But did you know that all those awards are unnecessary in educating our children? When I wrote my blog post about Grading, I emphasized that our only competition should be ourself from yesterday. While grades are a necessary tool to gauge our knowledge, there really is no need for rankings and awards.
What should be the child's motivation for studying then? What else, but their natural curiosity. Every child wants to know. Every child, from the moment they were born, has a natural love towards knowledge. That desire to know, that desire to learn should be sufficient enough for every student to open a book, read literature, do maths, draw or paint, or simply listen to classical music. Believe it or not, every child is inquisitive. Why else would they be putting things in their mouths when they were mere babies? Why would they touch the soil, or play with that insect in the garden? They are eager to discover. They need to find things out.
That natural curiosity is being killed down when their desire to be noticed becomes their priority. At some point, their prime concern shifts from discovering and finding out, to earning that coveted medal. They start cramming themselves to get high scores in their exams. They lose the joy in creating their artworks, instead they focus on producing the most perfect drawing they can make so they can out-perform their classmates. Gone is the joy of learning. Gone is the excitement of discovering.
While touching the children's desires for approval may be effective sometimes, there is a huge downside to this. Aside from them cramming in their studies and review, focusing on the output instead of the process, there comes a point when these awards and merits of approvals won't be enough anymore. Have you ever seen a kid want to receive the same toy as a reward over and over again when they do good? The award would need to be higher and more motivating as the child grows. It doesn't do good to have a child's education depend entirely upon material things.
In our homeschooling journey, we don't do rewards and punishments. We focus and play by our child's natural thirst for knowledge. We make sure she is served a banquet of ideas which she is free to pick and digest according to what she needs. Afterall, our goal is for her to keep that love for learning. We believe that education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.
Most mistakes parents make is trying to fix a child on their own selfish desires, they want their children to be what they themselves want not what the child actually want.
I have always had this opinion that children should be allowed to explore their environment and decide what exactly they really want to do with their lives.
Alot of things influence a child's learning, we have the nature and nurture controversy.
Hmm focusing on the natural thirst of the child is really important. You’d know if the child is interested in such or not.
About rewards, most children will just do things because they know they can be rewarded but you can’t tell exactly what they want
Parents should empower their children to choose their own fields of interest. It is also necessary to observe child schooling education and especially his diet. We’ve heard nutrition plays a key role in child learning.
It's just like that, we all have a similar childhood and all those things remind us of childhood. It has to be earned by hard work.