What Can I Do?

April 24th, 2008 at 11:48am Kerry Burd

I was driving to work this morning & couldn’t help but notice that gas prices went up again.  No surprise.  What did surprise me was my reaction - I had none.  I remember when gas prices first went over $2 a gallon.  I was angry and upset, and decided to sell my jeep cherokee - a gas guzzler.  I actually felt sorry for the poor sap who bought it.  But now, I feel nothing, numb.  My daughter actually noticed my apparent apathy, saying, “Dad, don’t you care any more about gas prices?” What has happened to me?

“Learned helplessness” is a is a psychological condition in which a person  learns to believe that he/she is helpless in a particular situation. They believe that they have no control over their situation and that whatever they do is futile. As a result, the person will stay passive in the face of an unpleasant, harmful or damaging situation, even when it they actually have the power to change their circumstances.  Martin Seligman was a psychologist who conducted a famous experiment that involved placing animals in a situation where they could not escape electrical shock.  The animals initially reacted strongly, and tried to escape.  Eventually, though, they gave up.

When I realized my indifference to the rising gas prices, I immediately thought of Seligman’s study.  Then I thought about all the students that I have experienced over the years in my job as a school psychologist.  We look at these students who are dropping out, truant, failing and ask, “Why don’t they care?”  Isn’t it possible that it is not apathy that we are dealing with, but learned helplessness?  If students believe that they are powerless to change their life circumstances, as many of our children who live in poverty do, they become passive.  They look at their parents, relatives, etc. and give up trying.  I once had a 4th grade student that I was counseling tell me that his primary goal every day was “to not get shot & killed.”

What’s my point?  In attempting to reach the truants and dropouts of our world, I believe that we must take into consideration the mindset that we are dealing with.  What we interpret as apathy and indifference may very well be learned helplessness.  There is a very big difference between someone who doesn’t care and someone who has given up hope.  It is my opinion that if we are going to make a lasting impact on these students, we must work together to get them to believe that there is hope - we have to get them to believe in their potential, to help them see that there is a real chance for something better than what they’ve experienced.  That can’t happen without developing relationships with these children and their parents - and that takes time & effort.  Never underestimate the impact that one person can have on another person.  Maybe we can’t change gas prices, but couldn’t we attempt to help just one student who has given up hope to believe that there is more to life than not getting shot?

 

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