Teaching Strategies to Motivate College Students

The world is changing rapidly, as well as the way we think and live. Meanwhile, while changes occur in the way we read, communicate and interact, absolutely nothing evolved regarding the educational system. Students are showing much less interest and motivation to learn nowadays, and we tend to attribute such phenomenon to some kind of mental disorder or laziness, not realizing that both emotional and physical reactions reflect a new social tendency.

Studies applied on children with Attention Deficit Disorder have shown that emotions, particularly associated with metacognitive abilities, have a very important role in helping them develop cognitive patterns and assimilate information, so why do we insist in medication? But more importantly, why doesn't the educational system changes? This system has been created to promote a governmental ideal for our society, therefore, everything that is implied for our children and young adults to learn matches this paradigm. Those that resist fitting such model will not be praised as educational movies tend to show, but rather ridiculed, discriminated and rejected. This applies to both teachers and students, in which one fears being differentiated by grades and the other fears being differentiated by pears and lose a job.

Not much do we really have to say about teaching methodology and ideals, apart from the fact that, all the theories about it, are promoted but never applied, not even by those promoting them. Not many Teachers are able to recognize they are failing or acknowledge it without a high dose of frustration. More dramatic yet, is to notice the huge amount of educational professionals that actually believe they are teaching whatsoever. Schools and Universities create a vast and deep illusion in which there are those believing they are learning and those believing they are teaching. As a matter of fact, anyone can be a teacher, but not many teachers can admit such thing. If all you do is request that a student opens his book, read it and then replicate the right answer described when answering questions that the same book is already predicting, then, as a teacher, you're not more useful than a sports coach demanding twenty pushups. Nevertheless, we keep firing teachers that refuse to cooperate with the system, teachers believing that is not in the classroom that education happens, that spend time with their students, answer their emails and share their perspectives about life. On the other hand, can these teachers be respected by their own students, while demonstrating such attention and care? Experience has shown that this is not the case. Especially in modern times, is very easy to take a picture, film and record a teacher doing whatsoever, inside or outside a classroom, and then publish it on internet in just a few seconds.

A teacher is a leader of future leaders, so he must give the example through a performance that we see as ideal to a new world, not the world we want or believe, but the world that should exist, a world reigned by mutual-respect, human rights and peace; a world where humanity is the basic and ultimate law and no single government can be above individual rights. That world desperately needs people that think efficiently, know how to analyze information they receive and are creative, with a positive and humanitarian approach that recognizes the whole human race as one interdependent synergy above borders and nationalities, or even cultures.

This is what this book is all about, helping teachers and education experts understand the reality of a world that needs to balance and readjust itself into an order, a natural order of being and expanding in conscience.

Dettagli