There seems to be a misunderstanding about the relationship between motivation and the duty of care known as in loco parentis among folks in the education field. It is true that motivation is only indirectly related to academic performance, but that is a trivial fact. The important fact that seems to be overlooked is that when children are in the custody of educators that means that need satisfaction is a prior obligation to academically educating them. The moment you took custody of the child from their parent you became obligated to ensure their well-being as a pre-condition to providing instruction. That means that you do not have an option about providing support for their primary human needs. Primary human needs are the most central CAUSES of well-being, by definition, and they also cause motivation to be certain ways, too. Both parents, and by extension all adults that they entrust custody of their children to, are duty bound to ensure their well-being, which necessarily means providing support for their primary needs and ensuring their motivations are more autonomous than controlled.
No reasonable parent or teacher would accept the existence of a school that recklessly starved, suffocated, dehydrated, or exposed children to the elements. It should be equally abhorrent to accept schools that routinely thwart psychological needs which will manifest as a pattern of controlled motivations in their students and teachers.
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