Busy underachieving.

What has purpose got to do with busy work and underachievement? Quite a lot I believe.

As adults or as children, we find it difficult to maintain focus and attention when tasks are tedious or monotonous. It is difficult to keep feeling positive about a task which doesn’t give us a spark of satisfaction. The brain associates the restlessness and disengagement with tedium and monotony, and lack of value in the activity. We complain of feeling ‘bored’.

When you look closely, often it is not the task itself which is the problem, it is how we feel about it. Emotion is a powerful driver.

When we are faced with a different task which we discover to be tedious or monotonous suddenly, up pops the same emotion, even though the task might be unrelated to the previous one. If we feel ‘bored’ our mind convinces us that the task is ‘useless’, regardless of whether the feeling is legitimate or not.

Too many instances where this happens and eventually we stop bothering altogether.

It is true that we need to develop the ability to manage some boring bits; life is made of up them too. We would quickly burn out if everything we did was exciting and we were operating at our limits all the time. But we need a balance. When that balance tips in favour of the monotonous or boring we find it difficult to become motivated even about things which might usually give us a spark of enjoyment. We might say, tellingly, that ‘our heart is not in it’. Flatness, disengagement and depression can be the result. For children as well as adults.

Let's move from thinking about life to thinking about school. We refer to tasks at school as school ‘work’. Our choice of words implies there is an element of ‘work’ involved – that it will require crunched eyebrows and some effort. Yet when our gifted children are faced with work which is simplistic, or which requires them to practice skills they have already demonstrated that they have mastered, the emotions associated with tedium frequently slide in and, over time, the child can stop bothering with school work generally. 

Parents often mention the spark fading in their child’s eyes and we wonder where the resulting underachievement has come from.

‘What’s the point?’ is a question children often ask. It is a valid one. When we know the purpose of ‘busy work’, things that just have to be done, we can often tolerate it a little better. Sometimes the task that seems tedious has a purpose in the bigger picture. Knowing the long term worth of a task can put the tedium in context and make it more palatable. In this case ‘busy work’ might be justifiable, if the amount is tailored to a child’s readiness and pace of learning. Some may need more practice, others less, in order to lay the foundation for the long term. Even building persistence requires tasks to be meaningful in order to stick with them to develop the skill. 

It is the pointless ‘busy work’ that most often leads to complaints from children (and if we are honest, from adults in variety of settings as well).

When we are well aware that there are differences between students in any class, it does not make sense to presume or insist that everyone should complete the same tasks. A differentiated curriculum recognises the student differences between students and makes a commitment to plan for these differences with the goal of maximising student growth and individual success. Tedium then should be minimised.

Carol Ann Tomlinson whose name is well known in connection with the need for and design of differentiated learning opportunities advocates for respectful tasks which are appropriately rigorous and engaging for the learner (at what ever level they may be at). She suggests that it is when teachers disregard differences in readiness or pace of learning that complaints arise. When work is too simplistic, overly rote or offered too frequently, it will become monotonous.

And the chances are that our emotions will take charge of our engagement with learning.

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