In Greek mythology, Panacea was the goddess of universal remedy. She was said to have a poultice or potion with which she healed the sick. This brought about the concept of the panacea in medicine, a substance meant to cure all diseases. Today we use the term figuratively as something intended to completely solve a large, multi-faceted problem.
It is an alluring thought in these complex days, and one much favoured by certain politicians. There is a real skill in being able to reduce the difficult problems of unemployment, inflation, poverty and crime to one simple solution, and we need to be on our guard for those times we are being conned by a clever tongue.
Of course we know that real world problems are never simple, and despite the best efforts of panacea peddlers, most of us retain a healthy scepticism when presented with a sweeping generalisation that we know is unlikely to be true.
In days gone by teachers’ favourite panacea used to appear on a report with monotonous regularity. “Work harder” Often alongside a C.
That was it. No description of the attributes, energies and skills that the student had brought to the learning task; no helpful next steps to launch the student headlong into the feast of learning awaiting for him/her in the new term. Just “Work harder” and that would fix everything.
Well, the student knew he/she was clever and could do better and that working hard was a good thing. The student wanted to get good marks. But the biggest problem was that telling someone to work harder was as much use as telling a sick person to get well. Of course the student would if he/she could, but how?
Generally, there are two main motives for engaging in an activity. The first is the internal satisfaction gained from the activity itself (say, the excitement for a scientist in making a new discovery), and the second is the instrumental success one gains from the task (the scientist receiving fame and fortune from the discovery). These two factors were the cause of a piece of research in the US recently,
In their recent research, Amy Wrzesniewski, associate professor of organisational behaviour, and co-author Barry Schwartz examined the effectiveness of internal and external, or instrumental, motives. They report on their research in a July 6 article in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times, titled “The Secret of Effective Motivation.” The article quickly became the most emailed article on the Times website.
Wrzesniewski and Schwartz, describe the results of a long-term study of West Point cadets that found that those with strong internal motives and weak instrumental motives outperformed those with strong internal and instrumental motives. Sometimes, they argue, one strong motive is better than two.
The authors consider possible implications of these findings in a number of fields. “Our study suggests that efforts should be made to structure activities so that instrumental consequences do not become motives. Helping people focus on the meaning and impact of their work, rather than on, say, the financial returns it will bring, may be the best way to improve not only the quality of their work but also—counterintuitive though it may seem—their financial success.”
Read the entire essay at nytimes.com.
This is quite revolutionary thinking. It says that in a football match you are more likely to win if you focus on the quality of your performance rather than the score line. It also says something about how we motivate students at school, and how we can use our reporting processes to improve student performance.
It is my hope then that when you recently received your child’s mid-year report you were relieved to find no attempts at sweeping generalisations or unhelpful cure-all solutions. Our teachers worked hard to avoid any general panacea, and instead applied their professional insight to construct a targeted prescription.
“Work harder” might have sounded helpful all those years, but really it made no difference at all.
