[dongobread]

I get what this piece is trying to say, but it's ignoring the fact that schools are trying to maximize learning with pupils who often don't want or care about learning (unlike with athletes or musicians who are generally learning their craft by choice).

A significant part of teaching disinterested students (not just in a grade school but in general) is about making the subject interesting enough that students will want to spend time on learning and continue to delve further in their free time.

If you're trying to teach someone web development, would you have them churn through a stack of predetermined bootcamp-style projects, or would let them try to build something they have personal interest in? I bet the latter method would turn out much better for the student in the long run.

[bitwize]

As the gymbros say, motivation doesn't get results. Discipline does. Few children are going to be interested in learning all that they need to learn. Esp. when it comes to math. So you need to instill the discipline in them to do it -- good work and study habits, drilled into them until they... actually become habit.

That's the problem with, for example, A Mathematician's Lament. Lockhart is looking at the problem from the perspective of a seasoned mathematician, not a primary schooler without the requisite skills. He only got where he was in the field by memorizing his times tables and practicing elementary proofs until he could do them in his sleep. Only then, after having done the boring stuff, could he even begin to perceive the beauty and art in mathematics.

[watwut]

Gymbros are wrong. The hypefocus on effectivity is what stands in the way of healthy lifelong exercising. If your whole exercise regime is based on discipline, it will fail entirely the moment you have other stressors in the life. Because then it becomes obstacle to what you need rather then something that helps you be happy.

Gymbros are gymbros because gym is their priority 1, over everything else. They are already motivated. You know who used to actually end up exercising regularly? Guys who would meet for soccer game regularly so that they meet friends. And people who actually like the sport they do.

[bigger_cheese]

>motivation doesn't get results. Discipline does.

I think it depends on the type of motivation, when I think back to my time at high school (Australia in the 90's) there was a contrast between how English was taught and how Math was taught.

In my English class the teacher would assign the class a book, or a poem etc. Take this home and read to the end of chapter X before next class. At the start of next class the teacher would pick half a dozen random students and ask them questions in front of the class about what we had been assigned to read. These weren't the kind of questions you could bluff an answer to.

Believe me you were motivated to do the readings because no one wanted to get called up to the front of the classroom and look like an idiot by not being able to answer the question. You were motivated by fear.

In Math on the other hand we were given a textbook, told to go home and do exercises from the book to practice what we'd been taught. It entirely ran on the honor system no one checked to make sure we did the exercises, as a result I know a large portion of the class didn't bother. I wonder what would have happened if the math teacher were to have called up random students to front of the classroom and made them solve a problem on blackboard at start of each lesson.

[Anotheroneagain]

On the contrary, his whole point is that such an approach doesn't lead anywhere any more than memorizing the circle of fifths makes you a musician.