Introduction
How can we as teachers motivate students to take an active, inquiring interest in what
they are learning? We are told that students now making their way through the university
system are especially pragmatic about their education, viewing their courses primarily as means
to an end, the end usually being a job that pays well.
To this extent, they may deem the actual
content of a given course to be only of limited interest or relevance to the things they care
about. As a result, they are often resistant to becoming fully engaged in the readings, class
activities, and assignments. Yet they feel entitled to a good grade. As the author of Generation
X Goes to College puts it, students have “a keen sense of entitlement but little motivation to
succeed.”
In such circumstances, we teachers may wonder what they have learned in the end
—that is, what they know and can defend—as opposed to what students merely believe or can
recall for a short time after the course ends.
The problem of motivating students to learn is coeval with the attempt to teach. Plato
was keenly aware of the difficulty in motivating students to learn for themselves. In a dialogue
called the Meno he addresses these issues especially directly. The first part of this paper
highlights Plato’s insights with regard to the question of motivating individuals and in assessing
outcomes. The second part describes a survey we are developing for assessing student
motivation, which we hope will help us to improve motivational techniques in the classroom.
Socrates as a Teacher
Socrates has a 2400 year reputation of being a consummate teacher, despite the fact
that he denied being a teacher, or at least one who teaches for pay.
Socrates’ teaching is famous or infamous, depending on one’s point of view. He was, after all,
1
Jill M. Bale and Dudney, Donna. “Teaching Generation X: Do andralogical learning
principles apply to undergraduate finance education?” Finance Practice and Education.
(Spring/Summer 2000), 216-227.
2
Peter Sacks, Generation X Goes to College (Chicago: Open Court, 1996), xiii.
3
Plato, Apology of Socrates 19d-e. References are to the standard Stephanus
pagination and line numbers correspond to John Burnet’s Platonis Opera (Oxford: Clarendon
Press).
2
Convention