Hi there. In this education and opinion post I talk about the four types of students. This post is based on a seminar I had as a student a while back. It was something related to business management and there was talk about different types of workers. One type of worker is the one that works independently without much guidance or correction. Another type of worker would be one that is lazy when unsupervised. Another type of worker could be one that needs a lot of assistance with their work and is not able to work independently. This post does relate with worker types.
A student that is both hard working and skilled tends to do well in school, in the workplace and in life. Being talented and intelligent helps in a lot of situations where there is problem solving. The talent needs to be supplemented with hard work. The hard work comes in the form of doing homework, working on practice problems and going over reading material. Someone who has the talent, smarts and a strong work ethic does well in school, in their careers and in life.
There are students who do work hard but they need guidance when it comes to correcting mistakes, learning and thinking. Hard work alone is nice but it needs to be supplemented with tactics, thinking and sometimes strategy in learning. A student can work hard by summarizing notes from class but it can be time consuming and may not be effective. For memorization purposes I would prefer a quiz and recall approach with the use of flashcards or practice quizzes.
In the mathematics context a student can work hard with their algebra but they would make routine mistakes such as typos or a missing negative sign. The educator should appropriately point the errors and tactfully correct the student. I once had a student with good algebra skills but there would be a few negative sign errors that would make the answer entirely incorrect. Once I reminded her about these negative signs she would be more aware and careful in her algebra steps.
It is important to know that students are most likely not to get things done right the first time. Providing guidance to students is important.
There are students who do have talent, intelligence and good learning capabilities but they are lazy. These type of students think that they do not need much practice so they would not do much homework or training sessions. Priorities for this student would be more on leisure time than on school. This type of student is likely to think that their brain is enough for any test or assignment. No need for practice or studying as I can learn it all on the first go. The danger here is that there is a point where homework and studying is needed in the learning process.
In the past there was this one woman who got 90s in high school without much homework or studying. She thought that this routine of not doing much work would be good in university. Nope. (Note that there is a bit of grade inflation in the Toronto area for high schools. University scores are lower as the rigour is higher.) When the courses got tougher this woman actually had to do homework and study in order to start to understand information. A main problem was that she did not have any knowledge in how to learn. I do not know what her marks were like but I think she had to repeat a few math courses.
It is one thing if a student is behind in terms of skills and knowledge. School is there for building skills, character, knowledge for career advancement. If a student is behind and does not want to learn or do work then this type of student is a bit of a lost cause unfortunately. The rate of learning for someone who does not want to do anything is zero or very little. A tutor or learning provider may not be helpful if the student does not show up to learning sessions or does not try.
This type of student may rebel against the school system but the laziness remains as this person grows into adulthood. In the adult years laziness would not be rewarded in the labour market. It would be difficult to go from lazy to not lazy in the later years.
Thank you for reading.
