Students Should Enjoy Learning

When teachers do have the appropriate attitude toward school-work, they present it in ways that make their students see it as enjoyable and interesting. Teachers should not expect students to enjoy learning in the same way they enjoy a ride on a roller coaster. Instead, there should be the quieter but consistent satisfaction and feelings of mastery that come with the accumulation of knowledge and skills.

Teachers with negative attitudes toward school learning see learning activities as unpleasant but necessary drudgery. If they believe in a positive approach toward motivation, they will attempt to generate enthusiasm through overemphasis on contests, rewards, and other external incentives. If they are more authoritarian and punitive, they will present assignments as bitter pills that students must swallow or else. In either case, the students will acquire a distaste for school activities, thus providing reinforcement for teacher expectations.

Other evidence of inappropriate teacher attitudes toward school activities includes: emphasizing the separation of work and play, with work pictured as an unpleasant activity one endures in order to get to play; introducing assignments as something the class has to do, rather than merely as something they are going to do; the use of extra assignments as punishments, etc. Teachers with negative attitudes also discuss academic subjects in a way that presents them as dull and devoid of content. For example, they might say, "We're going to have history," instead of, "We're going to discuss the voyage of Columbus," or "Read pages 17 to 22," instead of, "Read the author's critique of Twain's novel."