Those of us who live in New England have strong Puritan histories, whether we are protestant or even religious. Idleness was considered a severe character flaw and that idea as trickled down through the centuries to modern society and especially our schools. I'm in a professional book study reading Grading for Equity by Joe Feldmann. The upcoming discussion is on biases and how we need to make our grades bias-free. As I reflect on what I'm reading, I think a major bias that teachers have is the idea of student laziness. I've been doing research and executing my findings for the last 7 to 10 years on why and how students learn, and I've come to the conclusion that laziness is a myth.
Exhaustion exists, poor nutrition exists, mental health issues exist, weak executive function exists, low parent expectations exist, students inability to relate to a subject exists, all which can present as laziness. Teachers use “laziness” as a scapegoat for why students are failing. Teachers tend to want to penalize students who they perceive as lazy, but laziness is a symptom, not a character flaw.
Daniel Pink in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us attributes motivation to mastery over something that matters, relevance is necessary. If our students, especially our most low ability students, don't see the relevance of the content, they will not invest time in the work. To overcome this obstacle, we need to constantly tell students why they are learning the subject and content, especially if we can make it connect to a real world example. Identifying the objective and continually referring back it makes the lesson or unit relevant. In the book Building Executive Function by Nancy Sulla the first item on her list of executive functions in Table1.1 is “attending to a person or activity” (2).
Students with weak executive functions fail to follow through on assignments; teachers think that the reason they're not doing their work is because they are lazy, but in actuality they have an immature prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex does not fully developed until it's 25 years old, out teenagers have 7-10 more years of development. This is the reason that teenagers make poor decisions, i.e. playing video games versus doing homework. This is where teachers need to recognize weak executive function and intervene earlier rather than later. When a student hasn't done an assignment, the teacher needs to provide space and often the scaffolding for the assignment to be done. The worst scenario is that the teacher moves on expecting the student will be motivated by the zero they received to do the assignment on their own. It's not going to happen without intervention. According to David Sousa in How the Brain Learns, when a person is in a mental crisis, the first thing to go is executive functions. Think back to the early days of the pandemic, when we were first quarantined. Although we were working from home and most professionals still maintained the same schedule, no one could remember the day. Our working memory, was impaired because we were in crisis, guess where working memory functions in the brain-the prefrontal cortex. I've know several adults who have said they cannot focus enough the read while they were in crisis, now imagine trying to manage 6-7 different classes' expectation, assignments, all of which the require focus, organization, and persistence, the exact executive functions that students in crisis are lacking. When students are struggling with mental health issues their executive function is impaired. Students in that situation need compassion and empathy not anger and ridicule for perceived laziness. Several of the causes of sluggishness, which teachers attribute to laziness, are in the control of parents. Parents could make their kids go to bed earlier, requiring they get the 9-11 hours that teenagers need. They could ensure healthy food that build energy, unless they are low income and can’t afford expensive unprocessed food like fruits, vegetables, and protein. Or, they are so busy that speed of meal preparation is the highest priority. Finally, parents could instill in their children a value for learning. However, our students have little or no command over their parents' attitudes or actions, yet we blame the students for things that are primarily our of their control.
When teachers penalize students for their perceived laziness, with the only thing with in their power: the gradebook; they are punishing kids for things mostly out of their control: immature brains, inability to see relevancy of Shakespeare or Geometry, and for mediocre parenting. It’s those students who need education most. What if teachers checked their bias and reassessed their “lazy” students. What if student learning was the goal, no matter a student's circumstances. What if teachers asked, what actions, shifts, changes can I take to ensure this student learns? What if teachers said, I will not let this student fail because their conditions are not ideal.
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