What Rich and Poor Kids Have In Common
We’re in a motivation crisis
Pressurized learning
In high-income communities, parents pressure children to learn.
In low-income communities, schools pressure children to learn.
In both communities:
- Children’s motivation to learn is left out of education almost completely.
- What needs to be learned is mapped out in advance by parents and schools.
- Almost all children are unmotivated to learn.
Dropouts and suicides
A lack of parental pressure to learn in low-income communities most generally results in children struggling in school and frequently dropping out.
For children in high-income communities, parental pressure induces social-emotional distress, and in the most extreme cases, even suicide.
These are consequences, not causes.
Sex and Drugs
Children in high- and low-income communities experience a deep psychological displeasure as a result of being pressured to learn, leaving them with no choice but to search for ways to gain control over their decisions without the guidance of parents or teachers.
While there may be a lower incidence of teenage births in high-income communities, is it any wonder that children in both communities engage in risky sexual behaviours despite parental and school cautions in both communities?
What about drugs? Children in low-income communities just get started younger, usually in middle school. College is usually when children from high-income communities start “popping pills” and “raging”.
Despite differences in timing, rich and poor kids seek refuge in sex and drugs as a source of freedom — as a way to gain control over their decisions.
Better than sex and drugs
What would happen if we let children learn about what motivates them?
Here’s what I think would happen:
- People like Bill Gates would become more common, because the biggest difference between him and most people is that Gates satisfies his motivations, not people’s expectations.
- Children would spend more time learning and learn far more subjects, which are two of the defining characteristics of people like Bill Gates.
- Children’s intelligence and creativity would increase, which makes sense because learning impacts the brain, the same place where intelligence and creativity originate.
- Children would be much happier, which, again, makes sense because people who feel like they have control are generally happier than people who feel controlled (e.g. how happy are prisoners or slaves?)
Motivated people succeed more
I’m not making up this motivation stuff. Take three reputed books for example:
- In his 1999 book, Punished by Rewards, Alfie Kohn presented a treasure trove of research that found students did better academically and personally when they were intrinsically motivated.
- In one of this year’s best sellers, The Third Door, author Alex Banayan cites intrinsic motivation as one of the most influential reasons for the success of people like Bill Gates, and many more.
- In another bestseller, Drive, author Daniel Pink credits intrinsic motivation with the power to revolutionize business. He asks the billion dollar question: what if everyone loved their jobs?
As I pointed out in my article, “Einstein was not a Genius”, more than 60 years of research on human motivation continuously makes three findings:
- Intrinsically motivated students do better in school.
- Intrinsically motivated employees perform better at work.
- Intrinsically motivated people experience higher levels of happiness.
Motivation education
I ask one more time:
What would happen if we let children learn about what motivates them?
This question motivates me so much that so far I have invented an educational method designed to educate children based on their motivations and have founded two motivation tutoring organizations.
By tutoring children in their motivations, low-income and high-income children with and without special needs, as well as English and non-English speaking boys and girls have achieved above grade level outcomes and outperformed parental and teacher expectations.
I am on a mission to scale up the motivation tutoring nonprofit I started in 2009, build a motivation preschool, and start a motivation grade school. I’m not sure children who are educated based on their motivations will need to go to high school, so I’m contemplating skipping right to building a motivation college.
Pathway to real world success
The question we need to ask ourselves is, “Why do we pressure our children and students to learn what we think is important while many of the most successful people worldwide learn only about what they think is important?”
Counterintuitively, the pathway to real world success isn’t about doing well at everything parenting experts and Common Core Standards say is important to learn. It’s actually about finding the things that you think are important to learn. It’s about finding your “why of learning”.
Don’t take my word for it. Use my theory of motivation-to-success (below) to interview anyone you know who has achieved great success. Ask them how well it explains the pathway they took to success.
Brace yourself, be ready to act counterintuitively, and let’s empower rich and poor kids to get on the pathway to success!
About Paul
Paul was born drunk by his belated alcoholic mom. He worked from ages 6–13 as a newspaper boy, can collector, daycare assistant, and garage sale haggler. From ages 13–23, he had more than 13 jobs, lived in a US murder capital city, dropped out of school, was homeless, trafficked drugs across the US, went to juvie and jail, and was robbed at gunpoint multiple times. At age 23, Paul read his first book, enrolled in college six months later, earned an economics degree, and developed the habit of reading nonfiction five hours a day for fun. At age 27, Paul embarked on a life journey to research and develop educational practices and organizations based on human motivation in order to end poverty and empower the human species.
