“When the student is ready, the teacher appears,” the great Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said. How true!
We are quick to identify the teacher as the single most important factor in learning, and this makes sense (and is backed by research), but how good can a teacher be, or be expected to be, if the student is not motivated to learn in the first place? Of course, a truly remarkable teacher will be able to turn a student around completely, taking them from disinterested to engaged, bored to curious, and apathetic to passionate, but these are rare cases and require exceptional circumstances and specific chemistry between the learner and the teacher.
If examination results are bad, or grade averages are low, if attainment falls by the wayside, will administrators get away by telling their boards that the students didn’t do any work, that they didn’t study hard enough? Probably not. And wanting to blame students, or teachers for that matter, for underperformance is not a very productive way of going about the analysis of achievement.
And yet, a truism remains and sometimes we need to be reminded of it. If you are genuinely motivated to learn something, you will learn it. When we want to find out something or appropriate some new skill, learn how to cook a meal or repair a bicycle tyre, we go online and learn about it through a tutorial. That’s how most people learn low-level procedural knowledge today. If there’s a real appetite to know something, all that is necessary is the source material to access the knowledge.
The point is important when we turn inwards and ask what motivates us, what we want to achieve, where we really want to go and why. This is where inner resources, lifelong learning, and motivation become the most important drivers. It is also why education is not just the transmission of knowledge but the activation of the necessary self-awareness and intrinsic motivation to learn, and to carry on learning after school.
Students at University of the People choose to learn online with us because they are lifelong learners—because they want to break out of their present situations to new planes of thought and opportunity through education. This is an extremely powerful vector that propels learning to great heights.
So next time you find yourself bored by someone or not engaged, reflect on the part you must play in that exchange, that it cannot just come from the emission of knowledge or skills but has a lot to do with your own readiness to learn, your own attitude, your own motivation.
Conrad Hughes (PhD, EdD) is the Director General of the International School of Geneva (Ecolint). He is also a Senior Fellow at UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education, a member of the advisory board for the University of the People and research assistant at the University of Geneva’s department of psychology and education.
Conrad’s most recent books are Education and Elitism: Challenges and Opportunities (2021, Routledge), Understanding Prejudice and Education: The Challenge for Future Generations (2017, Routledge) and Educating for the 21st Century: Seven Global Challenges (2018, Brill).
You can learn more about Conrad’s work at his website, Conrad-Hughes.com
We’ve Done Awareness – The Future of the Mental Health Conversation is Greater Specificity
When working with pupils aged ten to fourteen, one of the first questions I ask them is how they would know if a friend had good mental health. This question tends to give them pause. They’ve generally had lessons, by this stage, about mental illness. They have a range of vocabulary to describe various states of poor mental health and know about symptom spotting. But positive mental health? Generally, they’ve had fewer occasions to think about that.
What invariably happens is that eventually one of the class raises their hand and gives the answer: ‘They’d be smiling and/or happy’.
This is a great opportunity for me to explain two things. The first is that it is a mistake to conflate good mental health with constant happiness. As human beings, we experience a range of emotions and not all of them are pleasant. Sadness, anger, nervousness, stress, guilt, shame – they’re all part of life’s tapestry and entirely normal.
The second is that, counter-intuitive as it may sound, a person appearing to be happy all the time is potentially a symptom of mental health struggles. Some people put on a mask to avoid confronting the reality of anxiety, depression or suicidal ideation with their friends and colleagues.
For me, a person can be described as being in a state of good mental health if they have the ability to do the following four things:
Sit with emotion
We live in a world where there are hundreds of things we can use to distract ourselves. We’ve trained our brains to chase the temporary highs we get from junk like caffeine, sugar and likes on social media. All of these can be a distraction from what we’re really feeling and, in the moment, preferable to confronting our pain.
But negative emotions like the ones listed above don’t simply go away if you ignore them. They demand to be worked through. By distracting ourselves, we ensure that they will come out at another time, probably when it’s less appropriate (for example, shouting at someone who doesn’t deserve it, or having a panic attack out of the blue).
Recognise when the emotion has become ‘too big’ to handle alone
Sometimes, we need help in order to work through a life event or a complex response. Recognising when we are at that stage and when we need to reach out for help is key.
Learn from the Experience
Ultimately, the reason we have emotions that don’t feel pleasant is because it’s our body’s attempt to teach us a lesson. Sometimes, this isn’t possible – the reasons we feel sad or angry are completely outside of our control. A bereavement, for example. Other times, though – and this is particularly true where guilt and shame are concerned – there is a learning opportunity. We can ask ourselves ‘how will I amend my attitude or behaviour so I can avoid feeling this way again?’
Move on in a Timely Fashion
Learning from the unpleasant experience is part of processing, which ultimately allows us to move forward and prevent dwelling.
I see my job – which involves visiting schools and colleges throughout the world delivering workshops and conducting research on issues related to mental wellbeing – as giving young people the tools they need to achieve these four things, where possible. I also hope the interactions we have allow them to make vital distinctions between difficult or challenging emotions and mental health issues that require professional support.
Here in the UK, the years 2010 to 2020 were ones of intense awareness-raising around mental health by charities and in media. Successive governments promised (but ultimately failed to deliver) ‘parity of esteem’ between physical and mental health – i.e. mental health issues should be treated with the same urgency and be given the same resources as their physical counterparts.
Unfortunately, this period coincided with the decision to impose austerity measures which meant mental health services were stripped back in most communities. This ultimately led to a ‘bottle necking’ effect, whereby everyone was talking about their mental health more but, unless they had the necessary wealth to access private care, they were unable to get support.
It also led to an unhelpful conflation of different phenomena. After all, mental health is an enormous umbrella term which can cover a huge range of issues – just as ‘physical health’ can apply to anything from a stubbed toe to cancer. Teachers began reporting that their pupils were refusing to do homework or exams because, they said, it negatively impacted their mental health. What they meant, usually, was that the prospect made them anxious. Without help from a qualified professional, however, there was no real way to tell whether this was symptomatic of an anxiety disorder or just the normal, everyday stress, which most people experience.
That is not to say that the latter doesn’t require attention. It’s a mistake, in my opinion, to start wanging on about ‘resilience’ at this point and to label young people a generation of ‘snowflakes’ (which was, irritatingly, the path chosen by several prominent figures in our media). Children and teenagers need help to navigate so many unfamiliar experiences; whether that be advice, access to a creative or physical hobby which helps them work through gnarly emotions, or a community of people who share common interests. It is simply that not every challenge requires clinical intervention.
The future of the mental health conversation, I have believed for some time now, is one of greater specificity. After all, if I said I was having ‘problems with my physical health’ it would be ludicrous for me to expect the person on the receiving end to understand precisely what I meant by that, or how they could help. The same principle applies, here.
As educators or those with responsibility for young people, we can begin by seeing mental health disclosures as an opportunity for further investigation: As the beginning of a journey, rather than its end.
Natasha Devon MBE is a writer, activist and broadcaster. She tours schools and events throughout the UK and beyond, delivering talks and conducting research on mental health, body image, gender & equality. She presents on LBC (one of Britain’s most popular speech radio stations) every Saturday and writes regularly for newspapers and magazines, as well as appearing on television. She has a monthly column in Teach Secondary magazine.
Natasha is a Fellow of The University of Wales: Aberystwyth. She is an ambassador for charities Glitch UK and The Reading Agency, as well as a patron for No Panic. She is a certified instructor for Mental Health First Aid England and eating disorder charity Beat.
She has written non-fiction titles ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Being Mental: An A-Z’ for adults and ‘Yes You Can: Ace School Without Losing Your Mind’ and ‘Clicks: How to Be Your Best Self Online’ for young people aged 12+. Her debut YA novel ‘Toxic’ was published in July 2022 and is about coercive control in friendship. The sequel ‘Babushka’ was published on 5th October 2023.
