It is generally thought that children with learning disabilities are poorly motivated to learn. However, the reasons usually given are very vague and the causes are, more often than not, attributed to symptoms of learning disability such as ‘hyperactivity’ and ‘short attention span’. This article proposes that such symptoms may be misleading in the search for the true causes of learning disability and that lack of motivation may be the result of the education system rather than an inherent fault in the child himself. Methods of dealing with motivational problems using social, environmental and physiological approaches are outlined.
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