SS#172 – Maximize Motivation

What does it actually mean to prepare our children for real life?

We don’t want them just finishing assignments, checking boxes, and getting through school. We want them to become the kind of person who can take responsibility, carry weight, and step into adulthood with purpose and initiative.

In this conversation, we take a hard look at what education should be forming in our students beyond the academic content.

If no one is making them do the work, will they still do it? If the structure disappears, does the diligence remain?

If you’ve ever wondered whether your expectations are too high—or not high enough—this episode will help you recalibrate.

Real Motivation

Today’s Hosts and Guest

Guest: Dr. Ben Merkle

Dr. Ben Merkle is the president of New Saint Andrews College, as well as a Senior Fellow of Theology. He holds a DPhil in Oriental Studies and an MSt in Jewish Studies from Oxford University, England; a Greyfriars Letter; an MBA from Washington State University; an MA degree in English Literature and a BS in Education (Secondary Education-Chemistry, with a minor in History) both from the University of Idaho.

He is a teaching elder at Christ Church, Moscow, and regularly preaches at their downtown service. Dr. Merkle is the author of The White Horse King (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2009) and Defending the Trinity in the Reformed Palatinate (Oxford University Press, 2015). He and his wife Rebekah have five children and a growing generation of grandchildren.

Scholé Every Day: What We’re Reading

Family Politics, Scott Yenor

Mystie picked up this book after hearing the author on a podcast.

Daily Doctrine, Kevin DeYoung

Brandy isn’t reading an entry daily, but a little bit here and there does add up with this approachable systematic theology.

Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis

Dr. Merkle is rereading this book with a family book club his adult children have begun.

What’s not working with Gen Z

There’s no denying it. Students are arriving at college less prepared than previous decades, and not only in knowledge, but also in habits. They struggle to carry a load, to manage their time, and to follow through on work without constant oversight.

Part of the problem is how little work many students are actually doing. It is now common for college students to complete all their academic work in less than fifteen hours a week. You can’t really call that level of work an education at all.

When the workload is light and easily managed, students never develop the capacity to endure difficulty. They don’t allow themselves to be tested. They have not learned what it means to persevere when the going gets hard.

There is also a growing gap between the appearance of learning and its substance. Students can now produce papers and complete assignments without having truly read or understood the material. In some cases, tools like AI are used to generate work, and parents are not nearly skeptical enough about their students’ habits.

A student may seem to be succeeding—turning in assignments, earning grades—while lacking the skills and understanding that those grades are meant to represent.

In this new landscape, employers find that graduates are not ready for real responsibility. Our graduates can function within a system that tells them what to do, but they have not developed the ability to take initiative or carry weight on their own.

With a dumbed-down education, students lack the fortitude for real life.

Ambition is self-motivated action

Ambition is often misunderstood.

We tend to associate it with achievement, productivity, or visible success. But those things can all be produced under directed pressure. A student can complete assignments, meet deadlines, and carry a heavy workload simply because someone else is requiring it.

That is not ambition because it is not self-directed and self-managed.

Ambition exists apart from external pressure. It is the willingness to do what no one is making you do. It is self-governed diligence.

Ambition is work continued even when there is no assignment, no deadline, and no one checking.

Many students have learned to function only within a system of imposed expectations. They can perform when required, but they have not yet developed the internal drive to take responsibility for their own learning.

Therefore, when the structure disappears, the effort often disappears with it.

True ambition is not about being busy, but rather directed. It is the capacity to take initiative, to pursue something because it ought to be done, not because it has been assigned.

This is why education cannot stop at managing a student’s time or workload. It must aim at forming a person who can act without being compelled.

Our graduates should be the kind of people who do not wait to be told, but who see what is needed and do it.

Ambition, rightly understood, is not about getting ahead. It is about becoming the kind of person who can move forward on his own.

Preparing for college in high school

The goal of high school is not simply to get through certain material. It is to prepare a student to carry responsibility without being managed.

That means holding real standards.

Deadlines should be actual deadlines, not suggestions. Students should complete work because it is assigned, not because a parent rescues them or fudges for them at the last minute.

A student who learns that expectations can be adjusted to accommodate him will not be ready for real life.

We must resist the impulse to side with our child against the work or standards.

When a student feels the weight of an assignment, our temptation might be to relieve the pressure. But pressure is part of necessary formation.

Pressure teaches him to persist, to endure, and to follow through.

High school should include real work that requires sustained effort. Students need to experience what it is to carry a full load and not quit. Without that experience, they arrive at the next stage untested.

At the same time, the goal is not simply a rigorous workload, but fruitfulness. Students should begin to take ownership of their work, not merely complete it. They should be learning to act without constant oversight, to do what needs to be done even when no one is making them.

Preparation also includes allowing for risk and movement toward adulthood. Especially for sons, there must be a willingness to let them step forward, to take responsibility, and eventually to launch.

Holding them back in the name of safety can delay the very maturity we are trying to cultivate.

High school, then, is not about perfect performance. It is about forming a student who can carry weight, meet expectations, and begin to act on his own initiative.

Without that, college becomes a shock.

Motivating boys v motivating girls

Students do not all respond to the same kind of pressure in the same way.

In general, young men and young women tend to need different kinds of formation, especially when it comes to motivation and work.

Young men often need more external weight. They benefit from being required to carry a load, from expectations that press on them and call them up into responsibility. Without that weight, they can drift. The presence of real work—work that must be done, not optional work—helps form diligence and direction.

Young women, on the other hand, are often more naturally inclined toward conscientious academic work. They tend to take responsibility seriously and can carry expectations without needing the same kind of external push. Because of this, the risk is not always underperformance, but overload.

Where young men may need to be pressed into work, young women may need to be guarded from taking on too much pressure.

There is also a difference in how ambition must be directed. For young men, the task is often to step forward into responsibility and initiative. For young women, there is an additional layer of discernment—learning how to translate a broad desire to work and achieve into a faithful life that fits their calling.

The goal in both cases is not simply productivity, but fruitfulness. But the path to that fruitfulness is not identical.

Find your student’s “crush depth”

Strength is never developed in comfort. It is only formed when a student is asked to carry more than he thinks he can handle.

Students should be given a load that feels heavy, sometimes uncomfortably so. Our goal is not to overwhelm them, but to discover their “crush depth”—that point where they feel like they might fail, where the work presses in and exposes their current limits. Without that experience, a student never really learns what he is capable of enduring, or how to grow past any initial resistance.

Many students assume they are working hard simply because someone has assigned them a large amount of work. But externally imposed pressure is not the same as internal diligence.

When the pressure is removed, the habits often disappear with it. The goal of this early difficulty is not mere completion of tasks, but the formation of a student who can continue working even when no one is making him.

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