Learned Helplessness Blog #8 due by Sunday night March 17th at midnight
This week’s chapter has us delving deeper into motivation. I find myself concerned about a difficult concept titled Learned Helplessness (LH). You can read all about it in the handout. My family is concerned about LH in our own children. It’s odd, really. My brothers and I grew up without anything and my Mom taught us to “go for it” and man! Do we ever! We are one motivated bunch of Sapp boys! Now, my nephews had it a bit easier than we did (okay, a LOT easier than we did!). And sometimes they appear to be having a more difficult time jump-starting their motivation. So that’s often what we all talk about when we get together as a family, comparing and contrasting this generation of boys with that generation of boys. What motivates one more than the other and why?
I am fascinated by LH. But it does beg the question: What in the world do you do when you have a student who (a) has LH because they’ve been told their entire lives they are, say, “stupid”? or (b) they have LH because they hate your subject and have had no to little success in it and so they take the attitude, “Why should I give a shit?” or (c) they’ve been handed life on a silver platter and don’t expect to lift a finger? Yikes! How do YOU motivate the hardcore unmotivated cases? Inquiring minds want to know!
How do you motivate the hardcore cases?
(OMG I can’t believe I just cussed in a blog!)