Seattle Times: Should Learning Be its Own Reward?

A-san
Thu, 23 Nov 2006 21:17:45 +0000

There were plenty of successful people who homeschooled, or taught themselves, and didn’t need external rewards (superficial rewards such as grades) to gain their success and intelligence. Its a fact that almost all babies are born curious, its a question of cultivating that curiosity so that a child, teenager, and adult can continue to learn without someone having to teach them all the time, or without there being an incentive. Unfortunately, I think it is schooling which depresses that. I think its sort of like installing a switch into our brains when we go to school. Once we are in school, going to school becomes sort of like a light switch, which turns on. Once we leave, it must be turned off, and we learn very little because “we are not in school” and because “school is for learning, and nothing else”.