Why Lecturer Ego Can Kill Student Motivation To learn
The ego of the college lecturer is the unseen wall that makes student loss their comfort and motivation to learn
Being a student at the university has been the world standard for people to get a job in a competitive world today. But, there is an unseen wall (psychological wall) from things around the education system today that can stop, or even kill student motivation to learn. One of the biggest unseen walls in my experience as a student is The Ego of The Lecturer.
Before we dig deeper into the ego lecturer as the unseen wall, let’s talk about the motivation first, and then the process of learning to acquire knowledge. After that, we can talk about student motivation concerning the lecturer ego that can kill motivation to learn. But, before I continue this article is a subjective experience, I mean my experience as a student and as a lecturer, and also my analysis base what I’ve learned from psychology.
Motivation Relation to Learning
Motivation is a brain mechanism (especially the limbic system) that makes you set the goal and move toward the goal. As you move toward the goal, if you are more closer toward your goal then you got positive emotion, and if you move away from your goal than you got negative emotion. At least, that what I can tell you after I make a conclusion from Jordan Peterson lecture about the limbic system in youtube. But of course, there is a lot of definition and interpretation out there to explain more about the theory of motivation, one of them is Theory Of Motivation Abraham Maslow, but we will not cover that in here.
Now, let throw a bunch of question, what is the student motivation to learn? why do they learn? what makes them learn? how does their brain work to learn and acquire knowledge?
So, what the answer? Okay, let me sum up what is the question all about. All the question above is about how and what is the best way for a student to learn and acquire knowledge. If that question then let’s find out what makes people remember something because learning and knowledge are associated with memory.
To remember something, our brain work by labelling information as important or not important. It works in very simple ways, storing information by labelling them with a positive or negative emotion labelling. As the old poet said, you will never forget the one you love and you will never forget the one you hate, but you will forget the thing you that call normal.
So, now we understand that our brain works to store information by labelling it with positive or negative emotion in the hippocampus before storing it in memory (the temporal lobe). Now, the positive emotion will make you repeat something subconsciously, so if you feel positive, feel excited, feel enjoy, feel great with the class you have, I bet you will remember a lot about what have you learn there. But, if you feel negative, feel bored, feel the material is useless and not relevant than your brain will store it as a negative emotion.
This negative emotion will make you remember the material, but it will make you avoid for the next class subconsciously because the negative emotion means you are away from your goal. This negative emotion than stopping you to access the resource of your brain to think, because it protects you to use your brain negatively. As a result, you will feel lazy to learn in that subject or class for the next meeting.
The power of reason will make people find the motive to do a thing, and this motive can make people access all their brain power, this is what we call as motivation, its empowering you to got what you want. — Quote By Author
Your brain works very efficient and effective ways, it only uses 20 Watt to do all the work as a human being. It is the most complex object in the universe. But we never learn how to use in the best way, or let say we never learn the best practice of how to use the brain.
For us to access the power of the brain, we need to find our value first. The value is then used by the brain to reason and to make a conclusion of what is important and what is not. If the brain sees it as important, useful, relevant and makes benefit to ourself then it opens all the resource for you, but if the brain sees it as not important than it blocks you from using it.
Different people value thing differently, there are so many variables that makes us different in our value system, one of them is our personality. So every people learn a different thing even they are in one class together because they see differently by their value system and their personality. Some students will feel one topic is more interesting than another topic because they see it fits their value and relevance to them, so they think it’s important. And then the brain sees it is important, the memory starts to record all-important thing in the classroom because it feels the benefit from what they see the classroom.
If you want to know more about personality, check my article about personality traits, it explains the big five model approach to personality.
Okay, now we understand what makes us remember something more than another thing, it is the value system in our brain that makes us feel one thing more important than another thing. So, that’s why we need reasoning to connect our value system with the thing that we want to learn or store to our brain. This reasoning makes us feel motivated to learn and it also makes us learn faster, easier, and more powerful.
The Lecturer Ego that Kills Student Motivation
As I mentioned before, We will cover these sections after we learn the basic understanding of what motivation and learning. So now, let’s talk about ego first, we can use Carl Jung theory or Sigmund Freud theory about ego. But I want to make it simple to you, what I mean by the ego in Carl Jung theory is the persona. The persona is simply a mask that you use to cover your ego, your shadow, your subconscious behind as human being. If you want to know more about Carl Jung theory in more detail check this article below.
You hide your real face behind that mask and even you believe that you are that mask, you live in that mask, you create that mask. So, when someone says something bad about your mask, you will feel threatened, damaged, anxious, etc. This lead to aggression or any negative action toward people that say bad about your mask, because you feel that they attack you.
When your mask is a Lecturer, you will act like a Lecturer, do as a Lecturer, and work as a lecturer. As a Lecturer, you have the power to give the score to your Student, create a syllabus for your class, have the style of teaching, etc. To being a Lecturer, you work hard to be the best in your field, you achieve that in the long term process, and this makes the mask, the persona, and the ego stronger. This process makes you believe that you are The Lecturer, you are the mask.
You think you are the mask, and you act as if you are the mask, until you believe you are the mask itself.
— Quote By Erfandi Maula Yusnu, Lalu
There is no problem with the mask actually, the problem arises when people challenge the mask, challenge the credibility of the mask, challenge the hierarchy that has been achieved by the mask. And then, the limbic system of the brain tells you to attack back to people who challenge the mask by using the power that available to them. In this case, when a student challenges a Lecturer or if the Lecturer feel he got challenged by the student in a negative way, then he will use the power of a Lecturer to attack the student.
Imagine if a student asks you a question or challenge you as a lecturer to explain something, or a student want to know more about your ability. If you use your ego as a lecturer then you can say, out of my class or you got E because of what you ask, then in this situation, you kill entire class motivation to learning. Now, they become fearful of the Lecturer, and fear makes them less motivated.
There are many examples out there about bad Lecturer attitude, one of them is the situation that I explained above. I have a bad experience with the Lecturer ego. One of the cases that I experienced, I was asked about, how the thing that I did can be worked?, but the Lecturer said, It impossible to work, but in reality, it worked and it backed by proof. But because, before I asked the question He was explaining about the impossibility that case can happen, so the lecturer feels challenged by me, then the Lecturer just protect his ego, protect the mask by said it is impossible.
I think I’m not the one who feels this in university life, I think if you have bad Lecturer in university you will found what I’ve found. When you learn and become smarter than the Lecture and the Lecturer not do their job as Lecturer (mastering the field and the art of teaching), that unseen wall will stand between the Student and the Lecturer.
As a lecturer, your job is to make sure that the process of learning is fun and exciting for a broad category of student personality. Not only that, but you also need to show them the value that relevance to them, so they will feel your class, is important. You need to make friend with your student, you need to break the unseen wall between a student and the lecturer. You need to befriend with them, to learn and teach together with them. If you can make them feel, you (lecturer) and them (student) as a team, as a partner, as a trainer, then you will be favourite lecturer that remembered by the student.
For this reason, when I was work as a Lecturer in university, from what I’ve learned as a student, my criticize as a student, I change the way I teach with this value. I remove the gap between me as a lecturer and my student to make them enjoy the classroom. I explain the value, I recognize them as part of me. And then the class become excited, most of them asking a question. This is simply by remove your ego, become one with them.
This is simply by remove your ego as lecturer, become one with student and you will start shinny and your student will keep motivated.
Okay, maybe this is enough for today, I hope this article can give you insight on how to be good Lecturer. I’m not the best, but I become a favourite Lecturer after what I’ve done.
