I overheard a parent say that he was tired of encouraging his son to do homework. He kept reminding his son over and over to do it, but his son just won’t listen, and he’s tired of it.
Well, duh! No one likes to be nagged about anything. There’s a difference between encouraging and nagging. To simply keep reminding someone to do something is nagging, and it’s extremely annoying. Imagine if the Catholic Church nagged people to go to confession, of if Jesus himself nagged everyone about their sinfulness.
Encouraging means to inspire with courage or confidence. This can rarely be achieved by simply constantly reminding someone of something.
This is probably something that’s too obvious to really need to be said, but there are some dunderheads in the world who don’t realize it… I’ve had teachers who think they encourage creativity by simply repeating “be creative!” before handing out each boring assignment. That’s not the way it works…
So if you really want to encourage students to do their homework, reward them with something (and, no, knowledge is not its own reward).
In other news, I’ve got about a week and a half left of college classes. I’ve got a lot of homework due this Friday and next Monday, so I’ll probably be busy all week. Then I have to study for exams. That won’t be fun.
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