My parents sometimes ask me of why I think so cynically. I admit that I do, I just do that naturally out of some reason. Reading through the textbook this week, the cynical side of me found something interesting to think about, which is about motivation of students in school. Studying academic effects of the self-determination theory, Richard Ryan and Edward Deci studied the relationship of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation in terms to education. And this got me thinking, does genuine intrinsic motivation truly exist, especially in older students (meaning high school, college, grad school)? My cynical thinking wants me to say no. But leaving the possibility that it does exist, I will say it may exist, but very few.
First, we must find where people start losing intrinsic motivation to learn things in school. Intrinsic motivation refers to the belief that people are inherently motivated to engage in an activity, whether it is a hobby, and exercise, or something new to be learned (Gruman et al. 230). Education wise, children are excited to learn new things in their early years, for they have little to no pressure in life to succeed, and they are purer in nature generally. Most kids in elementary school start off with no expectations from adults to get a good score on a test. The early years of education are more closely related to entertaining activities and methods of learning, mainly trying to increase the intrinsic motivation of young learners to want to learn more. There are little to no tests on the content learned, and grades are not that important yet. The only aspect that can decrease the amount of intrinsic motivation in this stage is rewards. A study by Ryan and Desi in 1985 showed that giving external rewards to students doing tasks can decrease the intrinsic motivation levels of students, for they input that they are getting rewards for doing a task, for the task is not what people do purely because of interest. Maybe this is the start of the decline in intrinsic motivation, as people get older and as a long-term consequence. But rewards are not just the reason for the decline in intrinsic motivation, especially in the teen and college years.
As students advance to higher levels of education in the public education system, external motivation increases. Such extrinsic motivations include being evaluated with test scores, career choice, and thinking about life in general. Most high school students study because they want to go to college. The main reasons can be clearly explained through regulations of extrinsic motivations. A student tries hard to get into a college because:
- To get a high paying job in the future (external regulation)
- Expectations from parents, friends, the school etc. (introjected regulation)
- Planning for a career (identified regulation)
- Concerns in doing well in life in general (integrated regulation)
Of course, there are students that don’t have a specific reason (amotivation), but most high schoolers fit in one of the four extrinsic motivation regulations. An argument that intrinsic motivation exists in high schoolers can be that there are high schoolers that attempt to go to college because they genuinely love to learn. But I have a question about this claim. To go to college, most universities require taking a standardized test, and getting certain grades. Do people take the SAT or ACT because they love taking tests? I have not heard of anyone like that in my life. And taking the SAT/ACT to go to college will result in the motivation being an identified regulation, losing its status as an intrinsic motivation. And if a person genuinely loves learning new things, there are other choices they can make to learn. College isn’t the only option to learn new things, for the internet allowed almost everyone to gain access to educational material. If the person is solely interested in learning, why not read online scholar articles about their desired topic, or go take free courses online like Khan Academy? It may sound too cynical, but logically thinking, I think there is no such thing as purely intrinsic motivation in the topic of going to college; if they exist, that percentage is very little.
As a child becomes an adult, their purity in character decreases over time. Just as how classic literature such as “Lord of the Flies” portrays, events in life results in the loss of purity in a child’s soul. In education, the loss of purity in the intrinsic motivation towards education are life events such as tests, college, and career plans. It is hard and rare to keep the pure intrinsic motivation as a learner, for life doesn’t work that way. I guess the only way to preserving intrinsic learning as people get older is to accept that you are not 100% intrinsic in your learning, but keep the attitude that you are voluntarily learning the content for your interests, like in your pathway to your desired career.
Reference:
Gruman, Jamie A., et al. Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. SAGE, 2017.