More from Why Students Don’t lIke School - Chapter 1

In this next section titled, "People Are Naturally Curious, But Curiosity Is Fragile," Willingham states that even though our brains aren't set up for efficient thinking, we like mental activity, especially problem-solving. Solving problems brings pleasure. We get pleasure and a sense of an accomplishment when we think successfully. The pleasure comes in solving the problem.

Working on a problem with no sense of making progress is not pleasurable. Nor does simply being told the answer give us pleasure. If you were able to solve the candle problem, you probably gained more pleasure than those of us who had to be told the answer.

But what characterizes the mental activity that people enjoy? We are curious about some things and not others. It’s that way for us and it certainly is that way for our students. But Willingham does not believe that content drives interest. He gives the example of people watching a TV program or attending a lecture over content that doesn’t interest them, only to find, that as they watch or listen, they become engrossed in the topic. He also makes the point that it’s easy to get bored when you like the topic or you think you’re interested in it.

So Willingham asks this question, “… if content is not enough to keep your attention, when does curiosity have staying power? The answer may lie in the difficulty of the problem.”

If the problem is too easy there is no point in working on it. If you believe it is too difficult and think it is unlikely you will solve it, you will not try to solve it. If we are overwhelmed mentally, we checked out.

“To summarize, I’ve said that thinking is slow, effortful, and uncertain. Nevertheless, people like to think – or more properly, we like to think if we judge that the mental work will pay off with the pleasurable feeling we get when we saw the problem.”

“This analysis of the sorts of mental work that people seek out or avoid also provides one answer to why students don’t like school. Working on problems that are right level of difficulty is rewarding, but working on problems that are too easy or too difficult is unpleasant. Students can’t opt out of these problems the way adults often can. If the student routinely gets work that is a bit too difficult, it’s little wonder that he doesn’t care much for school. I wouldn’t want to work on the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle for several hours each day.”

I wonder if this applies only to content? What about the expectations for the independence and maturity we have for our students as they move through the grade levels?

“So what’s the solution – give the students easier work? You could, but of course you’d have to be careful not to make it so easy that the students would be bored. And anyway wouldn’t it be better to boost the students ability a little bit? Instead of making work easier is it possible to make thinking easier?”