A good teacher once said that students cannot know the true joy of learning until they have worked as hard as they can. I’d like to explore now why this may be true…

Let’s first define for ourselves what “working hard” in school might mean.
Working hard in school means…

• Working in a regular and consistent manner – the advantage of this would be that more in depth and long term learning would occur. Exams would be easier to take and cramming would be unnecessary(cramming most often does not result in helping a student do well on their exams anyway, and of course, cramming does not result in quality learning).

• Consciously learning to focus one’s attention as fully as one can and mindfully learning, the almost meditative practice of learning to focus one’s mind on the topic at hand.

• Fulfilling one’s responsibility of doing all of his or her assigned work and more to create a greater learning experience, as well as learning what it means to be “responsible” for one’s duties/agreement/commitments.

The positive consequence of working hard then is not only getting good grades, but also gaining the hard working habits it would take to help students prepare themselves for a life that is easily productive and easily successful. Working mindfully and regularly to attain sets of knowledge should also help students get ahead in life, though financial success is not the only benefit of working hard. Knowing how to work hard and knowing how to exert oneself in life can bring a sense of self-fulfillment that cannot be experienced otherwise. The value of our children learning how to work hard in school and gaining that habit for their education and their future lives is invaluable, to say the least.