Fear of Others Expectations

It is a human desire to please those we love.  It is also quite human to try and please those who have the power to enrich or empower us.

“I have more than once observed to Lady Catherine that her charming daughter seemed born to be a duchess, and that the most elevated rank, instead of giving her consequence, would be adorned by her. — These are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and it is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound to pay.” – Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice, Vol. 1, Ch. 14

In considering how to motivate learners to good learning, I have considered first the external motivations, then have begun to consider the internal motivation of fear, first considering ignorance, than materialism.  So now I turn to this fear, the fear of violating other’s expectations for me.

Parental expectations are probably the most common issue here.  I will not enter into a psychological review of this, but rather admit that many students simply fear upsetting Mom or Dad and thus seek to get good grades in school.  Or they fear what some future employer or a college may expect of them, so they go about earning the diploma or grade they perceive will unlock those future expectations.  But such motivations are temporary at best.  At some point they no longer promote good learning.  I am not sure they ever promote true learning, but push students into the way of an education almost by reluctance.  “I don’t want to really learn, but they want me to, and I want to please them, or at least not get in trouble with them, so I will learn because they want me to.”

Every teacher meets with this regularly, but overcoming it is difficult.  The desire to please is not always bad.  But there are greater motives than this.  Perhaps this issue highlights one aspect of motivation: there is are greater and lesser motives.  The summum bonum, considered regularly on this blog, is the greatest motivation.  To get a good job or keep from getting grounded are good motives.  To obtain a better life by seeking its highest good is a much better motive than the others.

This smaller motive or fear can be overcome by something greater than itself.  And I don’t mean fastening the student on graduate school rather than just a Bachelors.  I mean that the Greatest can overcome the simply Good.  This again is an issue of appetites.  Wanting, desiring, seeking the positively best will help the student overcome fears about the lesser things.

The only help I know for this is to find teachers who love higher things.  A teacher seeking truth is going to spark that passion in others if they get the chance.  A good school will seek such teachers and then seek to keep them, and get them near as many students as they can.  Keeping all the right people properly flattered can then be left for folks like Mr. Collins (may their tribe find an island far away from me).

The Monster of Materialism

Having mapped out a large number of possible motivations for learning, and having then blogged my way through the external motivations, and having started in on the internal ones by addressing the fear of ignorance, I pick up now with a second fear, that of materialism.  By this I mean the fear most of us have of not having enough money to meet our needs, followed closely but differently by the appetite to consume ever more things to find happiness.  The fear of not having enough is dealt with here; the appetitive issue of consumerism will come later.

I believe many students are motivated to learn in order to earn.  I am often faced with the question, “How will I use this in a job?” which is loosely translated into the modern vernacular as, “How can I turn this into money?”  The student is motivated by the earning power of his learning.  To the extent that he is dealing with the fact that they want to grow up and become self-supportive, this is a good motivation.  But it is shortsighted at best.  Some learning is designed to make one a good wage earner, but we used to refer to these abilities and studies as the servile or manual arts.  And they did not require a college education.  They required apprenticing to a master who already knew those specific arts.

The kind of learning that once upon a time sent young people up into the university was the kind which demanded they pursue the liberal or freeing arts: those studies that suited them to professions of leadership, and yes, often good money.  Somewhere along the line we got confused and started thinking a college degree meant better money.  More on that later.

For now it is enough to contemplate that real learning can occur when a student wants the reward of a good job.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to be paid well enough to care for himself and those dependent upon him.  But this is a lower goal than that of seeking learning for other even higher and nobler reasons.  These internal motivations will bring about a life that should be able to “make a living” even while living for something more than a paycheck.

As far as it goes, fear of this sort is helpful for keeping a young person focused on his studies, but only as it brings obvious progress toward a good paying job.  The teacher will continue to hear the questions about how learning is associated with earning as long as this is the prevailing motivation for his learning.  Calling the student to something higher and nobler seems the best way to help both student and teacher move the lessons beyond the mere “color of money.”  Our next contemplation will be on the fear of other’s expectations.