Drive?

I saw this video from RSA Animate earlier today, and it really struck a chord. Even though the video was intended to target audiences in the corporate world, I have seen the total disconnect between reward and performance very often in myself and many of my friends in the strikingly similar situation so many students find themselves in today. The people that succeed the most in school are the people who are personally motivated in class- they like the teacher and don't want to disappoint them, they take pride in being the best or better than others, or they are held accountable to highly motivated parents who will not let them take risks with their transcripts. Rarely, at least in my experience, have I found that these students spend countless hours doing busywork simply because they actually enjoy a class. At many levels, the stress levels required to prepare for the standardized tests that monopolize class time make it impossible to slow down or bask in the beauty of learning. This is identical to the effect described by the video, where focus on economic success prevents inspiration, the only difference being that in school, students are too preoccupied with grades to learn or learn to enjoy learning, which has many more long-term negative effects.

Unfortunately, there are many students, at least as far as my experience has gone, that do not really care about the teacher's opinion of them, do not feel the need to compete for grades, and do not enjoy the majority of the classes they chose, or more often, were required to take. Although I often find myself lagging and questioning the "why" behind everything involved in the school "process," I am able to manufacture in myself a sort of synthetic motivation that gets me through, however frustrating it sometimes feels. However, in tasks that fulfill the three requirements put forth in the video (autonomy, mastery, and purpose, for those who didn't watch), my "less motivated" friends and I become much more productive than we would ever have expected, staying up until the early hours of dawn to finish some program we felt like making, or simply debating the merits of privatized health care or funding for NASA.