Fear
Frank Herbert said in Dune, “Fear is the mind-killer.” Fear can certainly quash creativity. According to the experiments of Teresa Amabile at Harvard, children who know their artwork will be evaluated for quality produce pictures judged less creative than those who are told there will be no evaluation. Herein lies the problem for teachers and professors. Because we are required, in most cases, to submit grades ranging from A to F, we are part of a system that encourages extrinsic rather than intrinsic motivation. Driven by extrinsic motivation, you perform because someone external to you is offering you a carrot or a stick. Hence you perform not because you enjoy the task but because you want to eat the carrot or avoid the stick. In this type of system, you tend to be less internally motivated. You read library books in the summer not because you intrinsically enjoy reading but because there’s a promotion that rewards x number of books completed with a coupon for pizza. In fact, Alfie Kohen, who wrote Punished by Rewards, says that summer reading programs that offer pizza for books create fat kids who hate to read! Even if the kids liked to read in the first place, when they “perform for the goodie,” as Kohen styles it, they tend to become disinterested in the activity required to earn the prize. Amabile’s experiments have demonstrated this tendency as well. When children were given colored markers and crayons to play with, one group was told, “You have to play with the markers; then you can use the crayons.” Another group was told, “You have to play with the crayons; then you can play with the markers.” In both cases, when groups were allowed thereafter to play with what they wanted, they chose the art supplies that were offered as the reward.
My question to you is, what can professors do to enhance intrinsic motivation and derail fear in a system that requires letter grades?
I think in many cases it is impossible for teachers to eliminate the pressure on students which leads them to dislike the subject matter being taught, because it is a necessary part of our education to do things we don’t want to. Students are required to take so many courses of specific topics even though they would not likely chose those topics if solely motivated by their own creative desire to study the subject. Intrinsic motivation will not always be possible, because there has to be motivation in the student to begin with. At CMA we have the benefit of taking a great number of classes specially tailored to our already determined interest. I think that this essentially serves to take away the stress caused by the pressure of earning a good grade, because for the most part the students here want to learn the material.
However, I also believe that taking courses which may impede ones creativity now, can actually help to bolster our future creativity when released with certifications into our chosen field, no longer under the pressure and fear of having to ultimately earn our reward, which in my own and many other peoples cases would be the license to work on a ship. One way apparent to me to reduce the fear of not doing well in some courses would be to make them much more dynamic so that assignments were offered with alternative choices much like our project in Creativity. If the student can tailor the assignment to suit their skills and strengths then they will enjoy the work much more and their creativity less hindered. That said, there are a great deal of classes (mathematics, sciences, etc.) which can not easily be taught in this way, and also if we were to only apply our strengths to an assignment at hand, progression in developing our weaker skills would be obstructed.
It is a very interesting concept to think of customizing classes to suit the individuals’ needs and attempt to limit the resulting creativity blocks of the letter grade. However, I think that this is a complicated battle that cannot easily be won, and that one of the best solutions lies in the students’ ability to cope with the class, put their best effort in, and not fret over result they will earn.
I hope this is relevant.
Instructors at any level face this issue. It doesn’t seem that there is any real way to solve this problem. I know through personal experience that I preform for the grade, not because I want to. This is all relative however. Some subjects are liked more than others, thus the student will try harder in that class, and the work my seem fun. For instance, in this class I will be doing a song and poetry book for my project. I will enjoy putting this project together. But in other classes, I work for the grade. Again, this issue is a tough one at our school because we are so specialized. As an MT, I put up with the classes I don’t like to eventually get a job that I will like. This same issue plays a role in sports as well. When I played football and baseball in high school, and eventually rugby in college, we would always preform in games and at practice not just to win our games, but so the coach wouldn’t make us run a lot at practice. The reward was not as much running. The same stands true for school. I hope this puts some insight into the blog.
In his memoirs Albert Einstein has this to say about school, “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” I happen to think that this and what Will Rogers said, “There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.” sum up the problem with our education system. We are required by our society to go to school from ages 5 till 21. That is 16 years of being told where to be, when to come, what is good, what is bad and that we are “Below Average.” I think that Mr. Skeet hit it on the head when he said that students in college work harder and are able to express their true interest/creativity because the courses that are taken are generally decided by the student in his/her major choice.
I ask the question why can we not foster peoples interests and passions earlier on in the education system?
Well I cant help but give my answer to the question… I think it is because at a certain point a lot of people do not need to be in school any longer. I beg the following not to be viewed politically, but I think a perfect example of the faults in the system is the No Child Left Behind law. It is forcing educators to hold back the highly motivated and creative so that the people who do not wish to be there can meet certain “Average” bench marks. We need to get the kids who hate school out of the classes of the children who want to learn and explore their interest without being considered a nerd or curve breaker. Especially in the light of foreign competition growing by the day we need to sty ahead and continue to be the great innovators and global leaders that we have been. Sorry I kind of left the topic but I let emotion in….
Sprigamatron, I love your comments! Are you in my creativity class? If you are, I need to give you credit for this post.–Bunny
Sprigamatron is my WordPress account name. My name is Sprigley Allan.
It is impossibly hard for professors not to put some pressures on students because it is hard for students to urge myself to study so, professors have to urge students to study. I don’t think that this kind of pressures is not good because they are just a part of teaching. I hope you still remenber that I wrote essay about seniority system, especially in our country there is naturally these things you mentioned so, I belive that these things have to be here to be teacher.
Assessing the situation in a student-teacher relationship, it would make sense to assume that teachers should not be fully responsible for getting students intrinsically involved in their topic. This calls for an effort from both sides. To be motivated and creative takes more than a lack of fear of being evalutated. However, it is known that students pursue certain topics and majors due largely to their mentors, and more specifically, professors or teachers. Ask many graduate students how they became interested in their field. Many will say that they have been inspired by passionate professors. This is all professors can do: encourage the topic with as much genuine leadership and passion as possible. After all, teachers are supposed to assist in learning, not take every students’ hand and walk them through a topic. It is up to the student to take his own steps with confidence, which leads to innovation, or what we call creativity.
It is almost impossible for an outside force to postively motivate an indivual. Motivation must come from within that person and he/she must find creative ways of doing so. It is not the responsiblity of the teacher to make the students want to learn and be interested, especially at this high level of education where students are learning what they truly desire. Fear is not a bad motivator, looking back I chose to come to college and make a career for myself because I was farid of being a bum on the street conrner begging for pennies. I beleive creativity should come naturally and done without any holds or restrictions, because creativity is a free spirit, it is what it is.
Spoken like a truly creative person, Ben! I wish it were always so simple to motivate and inspire students, especially in a General Education course outside their major. Teachers who care are always looking for a way to turn that key or ignite that spark in students who seem disaffected. However, one “motivational” expert I know says that no one can “motivate” anyone else!
This question is especially difficult for me to answer given the specialized academy I chose to go to. I came to this school to get my coast guard license and sailing onboard ships is my primary interest. It’s always going to be difficult at a school like CMA to get students motivated and intrigued about learning general education when they are forced to do so. From my experiences in these types of classrooms throughout my three years, students are very rarely given the chance to express themselves through ways that appeal to them. Instead they are forced into expressing a subject how others believe it to be interrupted and graded upon instructor’s views. It doesn’t help either that such few classes are offered for general education courses. The majority of kids take the classes simply because it is the only thing that fits their schedule, not because they are actually interested in learning the topic. The easiest ways to get students involved are to allow them to take some of their personnel interests and experiences and let students tie that into their school work. Which is what I see being allowed thus far in Creativity. Thanks Dr. Clemes. Hopefully you will continue this theme throughout the course allowing the students to think outside the box and provide you with Grade A material.
Kyle, thank you for your frankness and honesty–very important in this course. Those of us in General Education are well aware that students at Cal Maritime may not be motivated to take courses outside their major. I hope to make this course relevant to students in all majors.
I tend to agree with Kyle Wheeler on this particular subject. Other than this creativity class i do not think i will take any classes outside my major, and the majority of the classes i do take will be because of requirements or because they fit my already crammed schedule. However this is a specialty school unlike 99% of other collages there are only 5 different paths for students to take hear at CMA. because of this it is very difficult for the schools curriculum to allow for more creative classes. most of us knew that it was going to be like that before we got hear. however i personally feel after one year of education hear as though i am missing out on the “collage experience”. i think the main reason for that feeling is that there is no flexibly in any of my classes because they all have extremely strict guide lines that are dictated by the USCG. really there is no other way to teach these classes and it really is a Life of chasing a carrot and getting whacked hard by a stick for failure or going outside of the set in stone guidelines. the only way i see this changing is adding more classes like this one, for example offer classes like art history or a painting class that cadets can take for credits towards there major. most cadets will take them for the easy A+ or because they just need the credits to graduate from hear, but it will interlace something into our life that we will otherwise have been deprived of in our most creative years…
Ed, I love what you say about the carrot and stick! Believe it or not, there is now a growing movement to add more courses that provide more of the “college experience,” particularly in the arts and humanities. I hope I’m still here as the transformation finally happens.
For so long there has only been one approach to letter grading with the “A-F” system, this being a good paper gets the “A” and the bad one gets the “F”. However, the flaw of this system is that the student’s grade is entirely based on the opinion of one person. I believe this traditional leader grading system should be thrown out, especially in a class that encourages individual creativity and growth. Because when it comes down to grading day, who is one person to say that another persons work is not creative?
Obviously a grader would be biased about another’s work, because it is only natural to be more accustomed to the work that we know, or the ideas and concepts that we learned through out our education. For example, a students work, intended to be abstract, may come off as uncanny or under-thought to the grader. However, because this class and classes like it usually require a letter grade for credit, a new system must be created. Here is my proposal:
First I believe that the only fair way to judge finished creative works, is to examine the amount of time, work and preparation the student paid to a given project. My idea to monitor this would be for the students to keep a creative journal. In the journal the students would keep track of their work schedule, detailed with a brief agenda of how long he or she spent on brainstorming, preparation, incubation, and actual work output. Upon turning in the creative project, the student would also turn in the journal. The instructor would then review the project and journal and determine, based on the time given to the project, and the overall outcome of the project, the appropriate letter grade.
I understand that new grading systems can not simply be implemented on a large scale, however, in order for new ideas to flourish into more intricate concepts and theories, we need to start somewhere. My proposal is that a class like ours tries this grading system for an assignment or two to see if it works out for both the student and the teacher. If so, then it could be altered to fit a more diverse educational environment.
David, I agree with your frustration with the A-F grding system, which I hate. In this class, more than most others, process matters,and journals and logs count.
However, grading for effort alone is problematical. Quality matters. Think of the doctor, architect, plumber, etc., who puts out effort but is not competent. In these cases I think the problem is how to rate the products of work fairly and objectively (as much as posssible). Someone can try hard but still be incompetent. I think rubrics can help to establish objective criteria that tell students how they will be evaluated. That’s why I use rubrics in this class while still encouraging creativity.
I also added, in a separate note to David, that the process journal IS a part of the Creativity Project grade.
To answer the question, I don’t believe that there is anything a professor can do to enhance intrinsic motivation. I simply believe that it’s something the student must find. At the same time I think that teachers should keep in consideration that it is hard for most students to come up with creative things and be a little easier when it comes to grading. The reason being is that if the students were told to give the best and all then they will most likely wont stress to much about the grading and will end up doing better on the assignment.
Fear is the ultimate motivator. It drives us to pay large amounts of money for insurance, to invest in medicines, and to operate within the set boundaries of our environment. This motivation brought from fear is a black and white movement, a do or die mind set, the ultimate destroyer of creativity. The students who are ruled by this idea are usually the ones who grow up to be the white color workers. They are programmed to follow the instructions, to think with a mind that has been roped down to execute certain tasks that it has been ordered to do.
Creativity is the essence of letting the mind freely travel. It is about not needing a motivator like fear, or greed to create something of substance, but by using one’s own inner values to create a product that can be beneficial. So when it comes to what a professor can do to evaluate a course without forcing intrinsic motivation such as fear, he/she must acknowledge the student’s values rather than products. So in a math or science course the students must be programmed to compute the problems because that is the nature of math, but in a course that calls the students to be creative such as in English, it is all about attitude. The professor must have a foundation of trust that ensures the students will perform better for their own benefit rather than having the teacher threaten them with a poor grade. This layer of understanding should be installed by the professor’s desire to watch the students pass rather than force the students to.
This is a very interesting topic. Through all of our years attending school there is tremendous pressure to achieve good grades. I think that a big problem with this is there is a lack of quality. I personally have a hard time being creative and putting much effort in a class that is not interesting. I understand that classes need some type of structure and outline so that the student can be evaluated, but at the same time, there are too many kids taking classes that they dread going to and in my mind that is a terrible way to go through school and a waste of time and money. For instance, an English class that requires the student to read several texts should be able to pick the book that they want to read, as long as it is on an appropriate reading level. This will allow the student to actually learn something that they are interested in, and also be engaged in the material and not just simply “chasing a carrot.”
Another frustration is grading systems. Students are usually graded on weather they did well on tests and certain assignments, not if they are showing progress and developing skills within the class. This puts a lot of pressure on students and in many cases the result is poor progress and lack of engagement. Again there is a lack of quality. Instructors need to instill the importance of progress and growth. CMA has many courses like this and it is frustrating to take classes like that. I have seen a list of electives offered vs. electives taught and it is a joke. There is a list of ten interesting classes to take but only two are being taught that specific semester, normally the two being taught are the classes you absolutely do not want to take and the other class do not fit into your schedule. This creativity class on the other hand seems to embrace my idea of progress and growth. It involves structure, but is open to new ideas and feedback from the student. OKAY
Wow, very inspiring post, Sam! “in a course that calls the students to be creative such as in English, it is all about attitude. The professor must have a foundation of trust that ensures the students will perform better for their own benefit rather than having the teacher threaten them with a poor grade. This layer of understanding should be installed by the professor’s desire to watch the students pass rather than force the students to.”
Any specific suggestions for English teachers?
“Angelballer,” can you be a bit more specific about what teachers can do? I’m intrigued by your remarks.
Whoops, John, “my bad”! I red-flagged your stimulating and thorough response but forgot to return to approve the comment so it would get posted. Thanks for alerting me!
I am glad you feel you have ownership of this course. That is an important objective of mine!
In defense of those of us who teach, I doubt whether ANYONE sets out to set up a class that is “boring” or “uninteresting.” I think there may be a disconnect between the goals of the professor and those of the student. Often the gap can be bridged with COMMUNICATION–students and professor checking in with one another, professors explaining goals and students providing feedback.
It is always a goal of mine for students to be interested, but I daresay many would claim that they were bored or disaffected because they don’t like English or don’t enjoy the types of activities to which I subject them. Still, it’s important to hear their opinions because sometimes the gap can be bridged midway.
Also, sometimes a class that seems boring NOW proves important years later. (I think of my disinterest in college science courses.)
That said,if a professor is not communicating with students and not trying to meet their needs or engage their interest, something is wrong.
Something is also wrong, I feel, with A-F grading systems. Grading is the only part of teaching I dislike. You make an excellent point when you say that progress should be rewarded.
I agree with most of the posts about the fact that you can not force someone to be intrinsically motivated. That is something that must come from the person doing the work. But when it comes to being extrinsically motivated that can sometimes be a good thing. When using the summer readings even if they read the books just for the pizza it still gets kids to read. Not only are they reading but they are reading books that they would not always choose to read. So sometimes being extrinsically motivated can force you to do things that you would not normally do. Whether it be reading a book or going to a museum for a class. The student can choose to learn something or choose to be annoyed that they have to do the assignment.
Just because something is assigned to you does not mean there should be no creativity. The student should be able to take the assignment and present it in a way that is interesting to them. This is where the problem comes in is that some teachers just want you to reiterate what they have taught in class and to not actually express your point of view.
Not sure if this is what you wanted but that’s what I got out of the blog.
Good comment, Laura! As a professor I hate to assign grades, but as a student I often used them to see how creative I could be or how much I could excel. If you can find a way to motivate yourself intrinsically even you have extrinsic demands, that’s probably the best combination for action.
In the words of the wonderfully creative writer Ursula K. Le Guin, “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” How does this relate to the question posed? I think this quote states in another way the analogy of the carrot and the stick. We are driven by external forces every day. Beginning when we were young, our parents were preparing us for the corporate world by telling us that good grades and a job are the most important things. This may be true in some senses, as no education and no job would, in fact, leave most of us with nothing. Our media tells us what to be, what to think, feel, and what we should look like. It has gotten so bad that when someone actually comes up with a creative idea that was intrinsically motivated, it seems out of place, or to be frank, crazy!
That being said, the factor that overshadows our daily lives is fear. Nothing motivates as fear does. We are scared of not being “normal.” The alternative, being safety or acceptance of all ideas, and of being content with what lies within us, can be scary, too.
What I am saying is that fear is time, it must exist to provide a basis and context for all other things. My argument is that fear can be fostered in a healthy manner. I does not have to have a negative connotation. Getting back to Le Guin’s quote, the end we journey towards is simply a target. Although this goal, the end, is a part of the journey, the priority should lie in the fact that the journey is the important part. The journey is what matters!
So, teachers can start by bringing in ideas that encourage students to balance extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. For example, to exist in today’s world, a student has to do things that they may not necessarily want to, but they have to do them. On the flip side, teachers could incorporate projects, papers, and such that have an intrinsically motivated theme or subject matter. THis way, students can begin to learn that they have to accept the facts, but not forget the meaning of the journey, which comes from within.
Absolutely wonderful! You are quite a writer.