Motivation #1

Maureen asked for details on one of the Seven Habits I mentioned in response to hers--

5. Habit of fostering motivation and the responsible use of the will by balancing freedom and discipline.

I have been thinking about it, probably a long time after she forgot it! The more I think, the more mysterious the process of motivation seems. Perhaps that is a good thing.

I started to blog a reply, and got bogged down. Now I'm thinking that it's too big a subject to address in one post. Anyway, I decided to just keep thinking about it, and when I come up with something that seems to apply to the question, to write it down.

What about all of you? What have you found out about motivation in the homeschool? What do you think of when you think of "motivation"? Any tips, or strategies or theories?

Here's an earlier post to do with motivation:
Public School vs Unschooling where I wrote:

It's a tricky question: Will kids learn by being forced to? Will they learn if they are left to do it freely? People seem to divide in two camps when faced with this question. I don't think either extreme represents reality accurately, but I have to say I think the "unschooling" camp has a bead on a more human truth than the "they won't do it unless they have to" extreme.

George Weigel wrote in Letters to a Young Catholic of the concept of "freedom for excellence".

"According to one of his most eminent contemporary interpreters, the Belgian Dominican Servais Pinckaers, Aquinas' subtle and complex thinking about freedom is best captured in the phrase, freedom for excellence. Freedom, for St. Thomas, is a means to human excellence, to human happiness, to the fulfillment of human destiny. Freedom is the capacity to choose wisely and to act well as a matter of habit — or, to use the old-fashioned term, as an outgrowth of virtue. Freedom is the means by which, exercising both our reason and our will, we act on the natural longing for truth, for goodness, and for happiness that is built into us as human beings. Freedom is something that grows in us, and the habit of living freedom wisely must be developed through education, which among many other things involves the experience of emulating others who live wisely and well."
A Better Concept of Freedom

This might seem like a tangent, but I want to get some of the groundwork laid.

The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the word motivation as follows:

motivate

1885, "to stimulate toward action," from motive (q.v.), perhaps modeled on Fr. motiver or Ger. motivieren. Motivation first recorded 1873; the psychological sense of "inner or social stimulus for an action" is from 1904.

motive

1362, "something brought forward," from O.Fr. motif (n.), from motif (fem. motive), adj., "moving," from M.L. motivus "moving, impelling," from L. motus, pp. of movere "to move" (see move). Meaning "that which inwardly moves a person to behave a certain way" is from c.1412.

Looking at that fairly recent definition, tracing from the earlier days when the science of psychology was in its infancy, I am thinking that it is rather value-neutral. The word "motivation" is a bit ambiguous. Do we mean "motivation to do what I want the child to do?" "Motivation to be active, it matters not how" or "Motivation to do what is right?" No doubt the latter, for many of us; for me, certainly; you can see I originally conjoined it with "the responsible use of the will"

However, the ambiguity points out that in that way, "motivation" is a transitive word. It needs an object, like CS Lewis pointed out about the word "progress". "Progress" towards what? It's important to know what you're aiming for, in some sense, to know whether you are hitting or missing. "Motivation" towards acting rightly; but in learning and education as in life there is a strong subjective element in what is "right". I can say with fair safety that even if my 7 children have access to exactly the same education, they will all end up in different states of life, and some of the difference will lie in that mystery of what motivates, moves, inspires them.

I meant this to be more practical ideas and instead it is amateur philosophizing. Next time.....! However, I did want to get those central thoughts in place, obvious though they may be:

When thinking of motivation, we have to think of what the motivation is for. What is essential for every person and what is just convenience, or convention. Perhaps I shouldn't say "just" so dismissively. Convenience and custom are fine things but they ought to be rooted to bigger purposes.
Motivation will be personal and individual, just like your children are, and for that reason a bit of a mystery.
Freedom and discipline aren't a dichotomy; rightly understood, they complement each other, though freedom is the more fundamental of the two. But like motivation, both seem to require an object. Freedom to or for WHAT? Discipline to what purpose? I don't say we have to have it all settled in our minds before we start educating -- a process that begins before birth, no doubt -- but I do say that reflecting and pondering on these things occasionally will bear fruit and prevent some of the errors in thinking that might block motivation.