Learned Helplessness Essay

The aim of this paper is to describe the phenomenon of learned helplessness among education and children. This paper will define what means learned helplessness, and it explains what is the cause of learned helplessness. The theory of learned helplessness was first introduced by Martin E.P Seligman in the late 1960’s (Nolen 2017). Learned helplessness is a theory that is applied on three groups of dogs to study behaviors of animals. The effect of learned helplessness is a lack confidence, feeling hopeless, poor problem solving and wondering attentions. There is a lot students out there suffering in learned helplessness. The paper also gives over view what should parents and teacher have to do to reduce learning helplessness of children in

Leaned helplessness is the theory that study a mental state in which an organism forced to bear aversive stimuli that are painful otherwise unpleasant, becomes unable or unwilling to avoid subsequent encounters with those stimuli, even if they are escapable presumably it has learned that it cannot control the situation. Seligman started his experiment by shocking three groups of dogs to observe their behaviors. He concluded that a group of dogs who get shocked in closed cage didn’t try to escape from a new cage even though the get was open, but a group of dogs that escaped from the first cage can also escaped from the second cage. This theory answered a lot of questions among society why people are just give up when something bad happed in their life instead of fighting back. The writer of “Motivating students in the Secondary School: The Problem of Learned Helplessness” argues that Learned helplessness in school is much like learned helplessness in Seligman dogs experiment. His point is when student experience failing in some task, they come to believe that there is nothing that they can do to change that even though how much they work hard. (Kloosterman,1988). some students and children are suffering in learned helplessness from the lack of motivation and

Learned helplessness has a big impact on children like luck of self-confidence (Shields, 1997). people have to assist and inspire their children every time. Parents have responsibility for their children, therefore parents have to encourage their children to prevent learned helplessness of children. School is the best place to shape children, so teachers also have a huge accountability to make children have self-confidence. Smooth relationship between student and teachers are a key for teachers to observer a children problem to avoid children learning helplessness. According to Jeannette, Children prone to helpless behavior patterns in the classroom are more likely to avoid the possibility of academic failure than to increase their effort in achieving academic success. (Jeannette, 2007) The best way to prevent learned helplessness of children is whether at home or at school, parents and teachers have to identify the problem that students are struggling in particular task. Knowing the problem can help to overcome the learned helplessness of