What Causes Teenagers to Lose Motivation in School?

What Causes Teenagers to Lose Motivation in School?

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Some reasons for high school student academic failure, which range from drug use to individual student insecurity, can be plainly traced to the nature of adolescence. Social acceptance and a desire to belong to a crowd are placed above academics in the minds of teens. When academic underachievement is the norm, devoted students may come under ridicule as being "nerds" or "teacher's pets". There is a difficulty, therefore, in getting students to become motivated. How do you propose to motivate a group of students who feel that they cannot jeopardize their social status for doing well in school? Other reasons for academic failure range from student feelings of incompetence in learning the materials, to boring class subjects and busy work.

To adequately solve the problem of academic failure, researchers are looking for ways to build a connection between identifying these students and reinforcing motivation in them.

Causes and Effects of Adolescent Academic Failure: Lack of Motivation

This category encompasses discussion of drug use, peer pressure, inadequate study and time management skills as well as adolescence itself, as they pertain to the causes and effects of each of these issues. "Facts About Alcohol and Drugs: Grades 9-12" is a web page containing statistics compiled by a national school health survey. The poll taken by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the fall of 1987 revealed that eighty-nine percent of the tenth graders surveyed reported having tried alcohol. Thirty-five percent of tenth graders reported having tried marijuana. The survey was conducted among eleven thousand eighth and tenth graders in a nationwide survey...

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...uate to get by. The way sociological and psychological aspects of student motivation relates to the overall topic of student motivation lies in the fact that the root of the problem resides in the minds of students and teachers, rather than in the outward manifestation of low grades, test scores, etc. In other words, even if a teacher makes it possible for students to raise their grade from an "F" to an "A", it does not necessarily mean that students learned anything at all. It is possible that the teacher made special provisions for a certain student to get through the class easier, such as offering extra credit. Only by tapping their minds for the want to learn will students actually thirst for knowledge, putting our educational standards on par with Japan and other world powers that pride themselves on preparing their kids for entrance into the real world.