AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: The Apathy of Society DATE: 12/12/2006 05:09:00 PM ----- BODY:

I had a conversation with a colleague yesterday about Motivating Students Who Don't Care," which I wrote about in my last post. He said what he found interesting was the question of motivating kids. How are they going to be motivated? And is the question as simple as "Kids these days are not motivated?" Do we have research about how many parents are living a life in which they are resigned and life is a burden? Do we know how many adults live in isolation from their local communities? What do the citizens of this country think about politics and large corporations? What percentage of teachers are burned out? In what sense is education of basic things like math, language, or narration connected with the existence of the kids in a relevant way? It is the cultural state of mind to be bored. I have heard from peers, "I'm bored." and when options are given of what to do, none of those options appeal. Where did that thing come from? People my age and younger want to be popular and attractive and yet live very unsatisfied lives. With the question of motivating students, we are trying to resolve a very pervasive situation. We live in a more fragmented world with a gap between rich and poor that keeps growing. We have major problems, in health (AIDS, health care), the environment (climate change), education (70% high school graduation rate in CA, 55-60% for Latinos and African Americans) and no noticeable changes in these areas. And, what's worse, nothing in any community of the world shows that these problems are going to be overcome. How can we think we are going to deal with motivation of kids when there are some deep lies in the world in which they have to live? What worked for our parents: protesting and violence in the streets no longer works. The 2005 riots in Paris did not change anything. There is no power in the streets any more and so you can not disrupt that power by damaging the streets. We are the frog in the pot of tepid water. As the temperature rises slowly, we don't notice. And the hand controlling the gas is who or what? The government? Those in power? Our collective selves? Sobering thoughts.

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