Could work ethic be the one thing schools could teach to really change results

[gofigure5]

Sometimes when looking at my DC and talking to other parents who lament the lack of work ethic/drive (for academics) in their children too, it seems a topic that comes up very frequently.

I should add that these kids are all at an academic (independent) school and and did very well in primary and went on to have grammar school offers so they certainly have the potential to achieving highly.

Issue is, they still, at 15/16/18, tend to procrastinate and be very uneven in their application towards study.

At home we talk about the importance of effort. I do get frustrated when I see they only put in the bare minimum. DC have class mates who are super bright and don't do much work (or at least they say they don't) but most of the others are not necessarily brighter than them at all but they do seem to put an enormous amount of effort and hours into their work and so reap the benefits.

My DC's school, and I suppose many schools, teach study/revision skills and talk about the importance of setting out what to do, time tabling and using past papers.

But when I look at the common denominator amongst my friends and our children who seem not to be reaching their potential, it's this lack of drive/work ethic (and instead their procrastination) that seems to be what sets them apart from those who are successful.

We have noticed that, generally speaking, children of teachers ALL seem to work consistently hard and get great results (even those who are 'average'. Teacher kids are clearly not all naturally super bright; some are, some are not, as would be expected amongst all groups, but there seems to be this ingredient which means they work consistently hard with a steely drive and work ethic).

Both my DH and I are driven, our kids see us work hard, help others and volunteering in sports/the community and we always frame things in terms of working hard rather than talking about 'intelligence'. At times we do discuss results (and might ask what was achieved v the class average score) which I guess is a no-no.

Would love to know if there are schools out there that actively teach working hard/drive/work ethic (and, if so, how do they do it) AND what teacher parents/grandparents do that seems to produce such hard working children who go on to do so well.

@NotDonna As an O level oldie, I would not have had the remotest idea of what a marking scheme was. We just bumbled through. I remember turning over a history paper and could only attempt half the choice of questions. Hadn’t been taught the other half! So choice was very limited. I had no idea we hadn’t completed the syllabus. No wonder dc get better results these days.

Thought the EPQ so good - pupil can chose what they wanted and mirrors university then something to talk about at interviews such a good thing.

Anecdotally only the ones with the work ethic opted to do it

There is a lot to be said for this ^.

There are cultural issues two, many immigrant children have parents with high expectations.

Jewish children often out perform others. There might be a few factors. One is that historically Jews have often been thrown out of countries or areas. Education is one thing that you cannot have taken from you.

But often Shabat limits what can be done, one thing that can be done is reading.

Turning of the TV, wifi and music for a session of reading once a week or more can do wonders.

@TheaBrandt How many EPQ students are interviewed for uni? Cannot be that many. Most do it to lower offers.

I guess dc of music teachers have a huge advantage in music too. I couldn’t really help my DD when they learnt musical instruments. Harder for them I think. This thread also shows very clearly why some dc really struggle. Parents cannot help them do anything. I’ve been a governor in a school where some parents could barely read. They wanted their dc to go better then them, buts it’s an uphill struggle. Mn parents are dedicated to learning and know how to help, but we forget others are not in this fortunate position.

I do a bit of work with beginner teachers - not as an official mentor but when the opportunity arises. I gave the last group a talk on cultural capital, as it's an interest of mine. The lead mentor commented that it's not really covered in the teacher training syllabus.

As this thread shows, it probably should be!

I don't think teachers can make students want to learn, however exciting a lesson is. The work ethic needs to come from home.

I think that when students have a comfortable home life they don't see the need to work hard as they know things will work out for them. So driving kids to a variety of extra curricular activities, sending them to an independent school, taking them on nice holidays abroad doesn't necessarily make them think that they need to work hard.

I agree there is a halfway point where a child is well looked after but not given too much & they develop a sense of needing to push to do well.

Maybe children of teachers can see that it is hard work for a relatively modest salary & are striving to do better?

We're both teachers & don't really push or interfere in what our children do in school. But I would say having more time to take them places in school holidays has been helpful. So a trip to the beach might be a chance to chat about something educational, chances to go to museums, go for walks, play scrabble, trivial pursuit etc. so nothing especially exciting or anything that needs to be paid for, but just good general knowledge about the world.

I also think that children of teachers are more likely to be respectful. DS often complains about a teacher but we generally back up what they are saying.

Agree with all of this. I don't know how else schools can motivate students? Organising talks is not lazy. It takes a lot of effort!

That would seem to be the total opposite. Everybody else is putting in the effort to get the kids to achieve and if they don’t work it’s someone else’s fault not theirs.

Work ethic by definition would mean putting the time and effort in even if it isn’t interesting because sometimes you have to just put your head down and get on with it even though there’s something else you’d rather be doing.

@RafaistheKingofClay

I think most parents in the current climate assume that teachers are the issue & not their child. I think OFSTED & teacher pay being performance related feeds into this rhetoric. Some teenagers are disinterested regardless of what the teacher does in class 🤷🏻‍♀️

I have this problem. No desire in ds2 to do anything other than bare minimum. Can you make them? Want it? It's a tricky one.

I think that when students have a comfortable home life they don't see the need to work hard as they know things will work out for them. So driving kids to a variety of extra curricular activities, sending them to an independent school, taking them on nice holidays abroad doesn't necessarily make them think that they need to work hard.

Or maybe it does @converseandjeans maybe they think I want to continue this lifestyle and need to earn decently to do so and therefore need to put the effort in? I guess some will and some won’t.

I don’t think a child has to have an uncomfortable home life to be motivated. Some kids from deprived backgrounds want out and work hard but I don’t think they’re the only kids who are motivated to do well. It’s much more nuanced than this.

@NotDonna

maybe they think I want to continue this lifestyle and need to earn decently to do so and therefore need to put the effort in?

Yes agree with you. I just don't think that there's any guarantee they will & parents & teachers can only do so much & facilitate. Ultimately they will choose themselves how hard they work.

@converseandjeans

I think that when students have a comfortable home life they don't see the need to work hard as they know things will work out for them.

The same can be said for "lifestyle" benefit claimants where you have 2 or 3 generations who've never had proper jobs/trades/careers and live basically on benefits, where having children is still seen as the "key" to your own home. They can't envisage any benefit in learning and getting qualifications, so they aren't interested, and that obviously leads to the disruption in schools. No teacher is going to break that cycle for kids who come from homes where no one works (well not on the books anyway!).

@taxguru

I think the OP is getting fed up of kids who have parents modelling a good work ethic & then they don't seem to be replicating that.

I do think generally speaking most teenagers will need 'encouraging' whatever their background.

The only way to stop generations of benefit claimants in one family is to put a stop to them being readily available - but that's difficult to do without some people who genuinely need them sinking into poverty. So it would not necessarily be a way to sort that issue out. I don't know the answer to that problem.

We are all agreed that it definitely helps if education is regarded positively in the home. But what we are struggling to understand is why despite the best efforts of parents at home & teachers at school, some kids still appear not be arsed!
I do wonder though if later on these kids become well rounded adults.

Can I add in that there are otehr agents of socialisation? The media especially social media has a huge influence on young people.

When I started teaching, I genuinely taught girls who aspired to be Page 3 models, then later ladettes or reality pop stars, now SM influencers (boys too) or YouTubers, or Love Islanders. They don't see that this requires luck, connections and , actually, graft. But they do listen to those who tell them GCSESs and A levels, uni etc are a waste of time and effort. Their role models are very important.

Friendship groups, too. They make a huge difference!

It can be quite frustrating if you are a hard working parent and your teenager just wants to hang around all day not doing much. I certainly stopped doing things like hearing reading and spellings etc once they were beyond that age and in a sense paid school fees so that the school would do the education eg I never looked at a piece of GCSE course work, although I did accompany music practices at the piano.

Not all families have the same views on what they want their children to achieve of course and in fact in my borough shipping girls back to Pakistan aged 15 to have a "holiday" ie force marriage is not unknown and if you think the best thing in life is your religion and being a young mother and having a lot of children that is one view and not everyone wants their children to get a lot of exams.

But what we are struggling to understand is why despite the best efforts of parents at home & teachers at school, some kids still appear not be arsed!

I don't think there's any mystery to that at all tbh. School work (inevitably) isn't always interesting, especially in subjects you don't enjoy (which may well be most of them). It takes effort. It takes up time you'd rather spend online or hanging out with your mates. Also it's unfortunate that the time when your studies are the most important is also the time when your hormones are very, very strongly urging you to focus on other things! I'm amazed anyone would struggle to understand that.

Some teens (through upbringing and/or personality) are better able to resist this, or are simply bright enough that they can get away with not working that hard.

Expecting teens to take messages about what's best for their future seriously is a bit like expecting adults to all eat healthily, do enough exercise or give up booze once we've been told we should. We all know it will benefit us in the long run, but it's no fun and for a lot of us it's a problem for future us to worry about later!

It's funny how we parents tend to think 'I've explained to my child why they should do X and why it's important! Why don't they just do it?!' while ourselves failing to do umpteen things we know are good for us and important!

I'm the child of two teachers. I was hassled, nagged and guilt-tripped into working hard academically. It was quite miserable really, although I did achieve well at school. Once I got to university though I had no idea how to self-motivate and massively underachieved, just scraping through with a mediocre classification. Plus a bunch of other gone-off-the-rails stuff. My boyfriend at the time was just as bad and he had a teacher parent too.

I took a much more hands-off approach with my own 4 kids (now adults). The eldest three always worked hard with no nagging needed; the youngest refused to do any homework until he got to about 15 and then got his arse into gear and is now hard-working, ambitious and determined. I'm honestly not sure whether it's anything we've done or just their personalities. I'm fairly sure they didn't learn it at their schools!

I don't think you can teach work ethic, you can role model it. You can't isolate school work either. It has to be part of the whole upbringing that effort generally brings reward.

However, children grow up differently, at different rates, with different interests and drivers. Having one single measure of success - the ability to study for exams at 15/16 - is clearly nonsense. Everyone finds their own path and life generally works out one way or another in the long run (ignoring the minority extremes of crime/failure to launch).

@NotDonna

But what we are struggling to understand is why despite the best efforts of parents at home & teachers at school, some kids still appear not be arsed!

I just think teenagers aren't always going to be interested enough in their school subjects to work hard on them. Lots of people don't get brilliant exam results but go on to do well in something they enjoy doing.

I don't think nagging teenagers is going to achieve much - I suppose they might get better grades - but they might be stressed, unhappy, resentful. My parents never put any pressure on me & I think I could have achieved better grades. However I had a hoot in 6th form & made friends for life.

@taxguru My DDs had a very decent lifestyle. They want the same now they are adults. Neither do they expect to do nothing for it. We can see they have a strong work ethic. However they come from a self made family. No silver spoon here. They understood work and business.