The idea that the number of nervous people in our age with its busy pace of life is ever increasing has become trivial. It is confirmed by the fact that studies in different countries show an unconditional increase in the frequency of neuroses, the most common nervous disease. So, "nervous child." What is it? It is a very common misconception that only an outwardly irritable, excitable child is considered nervous, i.e. the one who breaks down over little things, reacts excessively and violently to them, worries when, to others, there seems to be no serious reason for this. In almost every class, among the children who come to school for the first time, there are one or two students with a delay in general development. They find it difficult to learn from the very beginning. Of the ten words offered to them, they are able to remember only three or four. And then with repeated repetition. They fail to solve the simplest problems because they cannot remember the condition. Such children are not able to remember and think at the same time; they cannot do it. There are many such children (from 12 to 22 percent). If you explain mathematics to such a child and at the same time remember how to write this or that letter, do not be surprised when he says or writes something absurd in response. He didn't have time to switch. He simply cannot immediately answer an unexpected question. In this case, it may seem that he does not seem to hear the teacher. This is partly true: he doesn’t hear because he’s still busy solving the previous task! Among the first grade students, one or two immediately stand out, who after the bell rings for class for a long time cannot get themselves into a working state and continue to be in the sphere of other, extracurricular interests. They sit on the desk for a long time and drop some things. Gradually they gather and are ready to work together with the class. However, mental stress soon tires them, they cannot give a quick and correct answer to the teacher’s questions, they cannot work in a notebook at the right pace or place the notes correctly. Unsuccessful attempts to complete a task, a remark from a teacher, disapproval from classmates, along with overwork, lead to the fact that these children fall out of the general flow of the lesson, they have a flash of irritation or a reaction of indifference. In some cases, such children switch to play activities instead of educational activities.

Reasons for children's academic failure

Let us now consider more specifically what reasons most often lead to a lag in general development. If we trace the history of the development of such children, we find that the cause is most often some kind of disease suffered in early childhood. Which one exactly is not important. It is important that it was long enough. Poor or even slightly reduced vision limits the child’s movements, makes it difficult to navigate in space, makes him awkward, and prevents him from participating in general games. Failures of this kind also affect the child’s mood and affect his character. The presence of mild disorders of the central nervous system interferes with the normal functioning of certain brain systems and delays its timely development. A severe somatic illness that occurs in the first years of life can have a negative impact on the development of a child.

If in family If there are complicating aspects, then a whole chain of unfavorable reasons is included. What are these complicating moments? The lack of communication should come first here. Particularly annoying are those cases when adults create a lack of communication, avoiding all contacts with the child, except for “business” ones. If you have a child, then communication with him should be one of the first places in your family responsibilities. Here is what V.A. writes about this. Sukhomlinsky: “If a child in the first 2-3 years of his life does not open through the closest, dearest person to him - his mother - the whole human world to the extent that it is accessible to children at this age, if together with an affectionate, caring, anxious “, with the wise expression of his mother’s eyes, he does not hear the subtlest emotional shades of his native word - his mental life will go completely differently than it would have gone under the condition of proper maternal upbringing.” . The second unfavorable moment for children, which has a serious impact on their development, is conflictual relationships in the family, especially if they are aggravated by parental alcoholism. The life of such a child resembles the life of a hunted animal. His still fragile psyche is simply traumatized.

Particularly difficult are deviations in mental development child. These deviations vary in severity and in the reasons that cause them. A slight lag in a child’s cognitive activity may be unstable and not very noticeable at first. However, gradually, if you do not pay attention to the baby’s mental passivity, it will begin to affect itself more and more sharply, and subsequently make it difficult to study at school. All children have memory deficiencies, and they relate to all types of memorization: involuntary and voluntary, short-term and long-term. One of the main reasons for the insufficient level of development of involuntary memory in children with mental retardation is their low cognitive activity. The development of involuntary memory does not stop at primary school age. It continues to improve in the next stages of ontogenesis. Meanwhile, as the child grows up, voluntary memory increasingly comes to the fore, realized as a special form of activity. Without a sufficient level of development of voluntary memory, full-fledged learning is impossible. It is known that at primary school age, visual material is absorbed better than verbal material. It turns out that the form of presentation of the material is especially important for children who are lagging behind. A significant lag and originality is found in the development of mental activity in children. This is expressed in the lack of formation of such operations as analysis, synthesis, in the inability to identify essential features and make generalizations, in the low level of development of abstract thinking. These students are characterized by an inability to organize their mental activity. Serious problems arise when studying mathematics. In the studies of V.I. Lubovsky, G.I. Zharenkova point out the shortcomings of speech regulation of actions, which explains the disorganization and lack of purposefulness characteristic of the activities of these students. One of the most common internal reasons for academic failure is the insufficient development of thinking among schoolchildren, the unpreparedness of these children for intense intellectual work in the learning process. For approximately every fifth underachieving student, this is the main reason for poor knowledge, and it can sometimes be very difficult to eliminate it.

Another common reason for academic failure is student's reluctance to learn. Due to the lack of sufficiently strong positive incentives for the learning process itself. Reluctance to learn can arise for various reasons. They all boil down mainly to learning difficulties. For example, a student does not know how, cannot force himself to study. Sometimes reluctance to learn is generated by the objective difficulty of the subject for the student. In this case, you should stimulate him by all available means, show him the joyful side of learning and overcoming difficulties, the inner beauty of the subject. The student's reluctance to study may be caused by the student's lack of interest only in this subject. A student may be capable, it is easy for him to study, and if he wanted, he could do well. However, he is indifferent only to this subject. Here you should look for and find an approach that would rediscover for a given student the merits of the subject being studied. Lack of interest in learning from the first steps of learning is fraught with yet another problem in the future. Teacher A. Novikov wrote about this very well: “We place a child who reads fluently, writes well and draws well in first grade only because he is seven years old. He “goes through” the alphabet and writes sticks along with everyone else; studying immediately turns out to be a dull, monotonous task for him that does not require work. By the fourth grade, when he begins to encounter incomprehensible things, he can no longer cope with them, since he is not used to working and is still naively confident that studying at school is a trifle. This is the reason for the sharp decline in the academic performance of many 11-12 year old children who shone with their success in primary school. They don’t know how, they’re not used to opening a book, finding the right topic, reading it, thinking, writing something down, asking a question about the topic. They haven't needed any of this until now.

A common cause of persistent underachievement is indiscipline individual students. Their number increases widely, increasing in the upper grades. Experience with such students shows that if you find feasible and interesting work for them, both in the classroom and outside of it, they gradually improve. The authority of the teacher, interest in the subject, and work outside of class hours determine the success of the fight against indiscipline.

The subjective reasons for academic failure include the sometimes encountered personal enmity student to teacher. Persistent dislike and disrespect for the teacher greatly interfere with the mobilization of the student’s efforts and give rise to poor performance. Life experience and pedagogical duty should help the teacher find an approach to such students. Often it is enough to discover and correct some of your mistakes in order to regain respect for yourself. It is important that there is no falsehood in the relationship between teacher and student. Any insincerity will only worsen the relationship.

A common reason for academic failure is the so-called preventive two. Sometimes a teacher punishes a student for refusing to answer. From the outside, this approach seems objective. But when such bad marks accumulate, they, as a rule, develop in the student’s personal plan into a new quality - a state of uncertainty, indifference to assessment. After all, sooner or later, such students get three for a quarter, but they simply cannot get four. Thus, imaginary rigor and objectivity gives rise to poor academic performance, indifference to studies, reluctance to work and, as a consequence, more bad grades!

Underachievement may be due to street problem. Rest and games in the fresh air are, of course, necessary. However, there are often so many temptations, and there is so little parental control and student diligence that not very enthusiastic students spend most of their time after school in the company of street friends. Since the curriculum involves systematic work at home, all the prerequisites for lag and failure arise.

One of the troubles of any person (and perhaps doubly so for teachers) is the conservatism and stability of the images of those with whom he communicates. Once formed, this image freezes in its original form, almost forever. At any given moment in a child's life, to describe any of them only as a “capable but lazy” or “diligent girl” is to say nothing. Moreover, the frozen image of the student interferes with interaction with him for a long time. Stable performances create a certain atmosphere in the classroom; the student finds himself covered, like a network, by the system of expectations of the teacher and classmates. Children who perform poorly in the early years of school usually remain at that level of achievement. A low teacher rating reinforces general negative expectations, and expectations give rise to corresponding results and grades... It turns out to be a kind of vicious circle of failure- and at an increasingly descending level. It is known how this failure affects development: self-esteem decreases, educational interests disappear. Not having the opportunity to establish himself in his studies, special knowledge of any academic subject, general erudition - something that is respected in the class - a teenager, denying all school values, rebels, violates discipline, finds friends and a business that helps to assert himself outside the school walls, in companies. Alas, this is familiar to everyone - in every class, in every yard there are disadvantaged schoolchildren from whom nothing good is expected.

Typically, a student is encouraged to engage in learning activities by many motives. However, one or two motives dominate among them. The early formation of school interests, as well as broad social ones, including prestigious ones, increases the activity of schoolchildren’s educational activities. A negative attitude towards school and fear of punishment negatively affect the tone of educational activities. Typically, such motives are formed in schoolchildren with low academic performance, and when correcting work with them, it is very important to influence the motivational side of their personality. A child may have good general development and be able to manage himself, but if he has not developed the appropriate motivation, things will be difficult. And with motivation, as you know, a person can move mountains.

Children with attention deficit disorder.

It is impossible not to notice children with disorders of this type, since they stand out sharply from their peers with their behavior. This behavior is typical for children with the so-called hyperkinetic, or hyperactive syndrome. One of its specific features is the child’s excessive activity and excessive mobility. Recently, experts have shown that hyperactivity is one of the manifestations of a whole complex of disorders observed in such children. The main defect is associated with a lack of attention mechanisms and inhibitory control. Therefore, such a disorder is more accurately classified as “attention deficit disorder.” Entering school creates serious difficulties for children with lack of attention, since educational activities place increased demands on the development of this function. Experts identify the following clinical manifestations of attention deficit disorder in children:

1. restless movements in the hands and feet

2. inability to sit still when required

3. Easily distracted by extraneous stimuli

4. Impatience, inability to wait your turn

5. inability to concentrate

6. Frequent transitions from one unfinished action to another

7. inability to play quietly and calmly

8. talkativeness

These primary behavioral disorders are accompanied by serious secondary disorders, which primarily include poor school performance. Poor academic performance is a typical phenomenon for hyperactive children. It is determined by the characteristics of their behavior, which do not correspond to the age norm and is a serious obstacle to the full inclusion of the child in educational activities.

“This is a terrible danger - idleness at the desk;

idleness for six hours every day, idleness for months and years.

It corrupts."

V.A. Sukhomlinsky

Each of us dreams of achieving some heights in life, of becoming successful as an individual, and in general, of becoming successful. What is success? In my opinion, success is a combination of elements, such as public recognition, a good family, etc. If you try to build a logical chain of achieving success in life, in particular getting an interesting and prestigious job, it might look like this: - To get a profession you need to enroll and study successfully at university. - For admission you need knowledge and the ability to apply it.

And good knowledge can be obtained if you study hard and successfully at school. It would seem that a simple chain is obtained. But only a few follow this chain. What about the rest? Why do they study poorly? What is this connected with? Because they don't want to learn or can't? Or maybe something else matters?

The problem of academic failure worries everyone: both adults and children. Obviously, there is not a single mentally healthy child in the world who would like to study poorly. When dreams of successful school years are dashed by the first “f”, the child first loses the desire to study, and then he simply skips classes or becomes a “difficult” student, which most often leads to new negative manifestations in behavior. Underachieving students begin to look for people around whom they will not feel insignificant. So they end up in yard companies, joining the army of hooligans and drug addicts.

What is underachievement?

Failure to achieve - this is a lag in learning, in which, in the allotted time, the student does not master at a satisfactory level the knowledge provided for by the curriculum, as well as the whole range of problems that a child may develop in connection with systematic learning (both in a group and individually).

To find a way to overcome academic failure, you need to know the reasons that give rise to it. There are two groups of reasons for academic failure: external and internal

To external reasons

Social, i.e., a decrease in the value of education in society, the instability of the existing educational system.

2. Imperfect organization of the educational process locally(uninteresting lessons, lack of an individual approach, overload of students, undeveloped methods of educational activities, gaps in knowledge

3. External influence– streets, families, etc.

To external reasons

The main internal reason for academic failure today is health defects in schoolchildren caused by a sharp deterioration in the level of material well-being of families. Medical institutions note that every fourth child has serious health problems from the moment of birth. This must be taken into account when organizing the educational process, because a person suffering from certain ailments is not able to withstand colossal educational loads.

Low intelligence development, which should also be timely reflected in the compilation of programs and the creation of new textbooks. The educational material should be feasible for most students.

Internal reasons include lack of motivation to study: the child has an incorrectly formed attitude towards education, he does not understand its social significance and does not strive to be successful in educational activities.

And finally the problem poor development of the volitional sphere in students.

K.D. Ushinsky: “Teaching based only on interest does not allow the student’s will to strengthen, since not everything in learning is interesting, and a lot will have to be taken by willpower.”

The main signs of student failure can be considered:

gaps in factual knowledge and skills specific to a given subject that do not allow one to characterize the essential elements of the concepts, laws, theories being studied, as well as to carry out the necessary practical actions;

gaps in the skills of educational and cognitive activity, which reduce the pace of work so much that the student cannot master the required amount of knowledge, skills and abilities in the allotted time;

insufficient level of development and cultivation of personal qualities, which does not allow the student to demonstrate independence, perseverance, organization and other qualities necessary for successful learning;

the student cannot reproduce the definitions of concepts, formulas, proofs, and cannot, while presenting a system of concepts, depart from the finished text; does not understand the text based on the studied system of concepts. These signs appear when students ask relevant questions.

difficulties of a teenager, manifested in the form of educational lag, emotional instability.

Among the main ways to detect student delays are:

observing students’ reactions to difficulties in work, successes and failures;

the teacher’s questions and his demands to formulate this or that position;

educational independent work in the classroom. When conducting them, the teacher receives material for judging both the results of the activity and the course of its progress. He watches the students’ work, listens and answers their questions, and sometimes helps.

The school's psychological service provides great assistance in identifying motivated children and developing students' creative abilities. Psychological support is provided as follows:

testing students to identify existing knowledge, skills (monitoring);

diagnostics of achievement motivation and creative potential in students;

diagnostics of individual abilities of students; testing self-assessment of your abilities.

The world school has accumulated only two approaches to solving this problem. The first is the transfer of unlucky students to the next grade, where training is carried out according to programs with low requirements. The second is re-studying the course for the previous year, that is, repeating a year, which, as has long been shown, does not justify itself either in the economic, psychological, or pedagogical sense. Therefore, it is very important to promptly identify the causes of academic failure and eliminate them. If in the lower grades a child has not developed the skills and desire to learn, then every year learning difficulties will grow like a snowball.

Contrary to popular belief, school failure is not always explained by low mental abilities or reluctance to learn. In pedagogical practice, in the absence of correct differentiation of the causes of failure, a meager and imperfect set of means is used for lagging students: these are either additional classes using traditional teaching methods, or various forms of disciplinary pressure on the student. These means, as a rule, turn out to be not only ineffective, but also harmful, since they do not eliminate the real causes of academic failure. And these reasons may be different; Underachievement may be based on several interrelated reasons, which in turn give rise to secondary violations in educational activities

The failure of schoolchildren is naturally related to their individual characteristics and the conditions in which their development takes place. The study of the composition of academic failure and the justification of means of preventing it require the use of two terms: “underachievement” and “lag”.

A lag is a failure to fulfill requirements (or one of them), which occurs at one of the intermediate stages within that segment of the educational process that serves as a time frame for determining academic performance. The word “backlog” denotes both the process of accumulating non-fulfillment of requirements and each individual case of such non-fulfillment, i.e., one of the moments of this process.

Failure and lag are interconnected. Failure as a product synthesizes individual lags; it is the result of the lag process, i.e. diverse backlogs, if they are not overcome, grow, intertwine with each other, and ultimately form underachievement.

Knowing the reasons for student failure helps the teacher eliminate some of them when preparing for the lesson. It is incomparably easier to prevent students from falling behind than to later deal with problems in their knowledge.

One of the most common internal causes of academic failure - insufficient development of thinking and other cognitive processes in schoolchildren, unpreparedness of these children for intense intellectual work in the learning process (lag in mental development from their peers).

For approximately every fifth underachieving student, this is the main reason for poor knowledge, and it can sometimes be very difficult to eliminate it. However, with the proper individual approach from many of them, the school curriculum is quite accessible.

This category should include children with slow mental development. What to hide: you have to work with such children in a regular classroom. But these children are excitable and easily wounded. They get tired quickly. Therefore, it is necessary to create such a microclimate in the class so that both they and their comrades do not feel a big difference in their mental development, to exclude any humiliation and contempt for them.

Other subjective The reason why some of our students fail is the low level of academic skills of schoolchildren ( inattention in class, failure to fully understand the material presented). Thus, if we conditionally divide all those lagging behind into systematically and occasionally underachieving, it turns out that for every second occasionally underachieving student, it is the lack of necessary academic skills and disorganization that are the main reason for failing.

In the work to prevent the failure of such students, special attention is paid to developing habits for academic work. The focused work of all teachers, the coordination of their individual work plans for specific students and, of course, the help of parents are especially important here.

Another common reason for academic failure- the student’s reluctance to learn due to the lack of sufficiently strong positive incentives for the learning process itself. This reluctance to learn can arise for various reasons. They all boil down mainly to learning difficulties. For example, a student does not know how, cannot force himself to study. Sometimes, reluctance to learn is generated objective difficulty of the subject for the student.

Notations, punishments, complaints to parents often only complicate the situation..

A student's reluctance to learn may be caused by lack of interest in the student only in this subject. A student may be capable, it is easy for him to study, if he wanted, he could do well, but he is indifferent to this particular subject. So another unsuccessful person appears. Here you should look for and find an approach that would rediscover for a given student all the advantages of the subject being studied.

Sometimes there are students for whom the teaching has lost almost all meaning. But this category of underachievers is not hopeless. If the teacher constantly scolds and shames them in front of the whole class, often calls their parents to punish him, then the results will be minimal. It is better to attract such children to help in the subject room, involve them in extracurricular work, etc. In a word, we need a well-thought-out system of measures in the fight first for interest in the subject, and then for the performance of this student.

A large number of absences due to illness.

For some underachievers, the main reason for difficulties in learning is poor health.

Such students quickly get tired and do not perceive the educational material well. From the teacher's table, all children seem, as a rule, to be healthy, if you do not pay special attention to this issue. You need to know such children.

A common cause of persistent underachievement is indiscipline of individual students, their number fluctuates widely depending on age, reaching a maximum in the 8th-9th grades. But, experience of working with such students shows that if you find feasible and interesting work for them, both in class and outside of class, then they gradually improve.

Among the subjective reasons for academic failure are the sometimes encountered personal hostility of the student to the teacher. Persistent dislike and disrespect for the teacher greatly interfere with the mobilization of the student’s efforts, giving rise to poor performance. Any insincerity only worsens the relationship, sincerity and understanding of the teacher will ultimately generate sincerity and rapport on the part of any student.

Let's consider the objective reasons for academic failure.

Among them, the most common is poor quality work of the subject teacher due to poor knowledge of the subject and methods of teaching it. Of course, the majority of teachers are workaholics. But there is another teacher. With a well-prepared teacher, many low-performing students could do well, but they are classified as lazy or incapable.

The next objective reason for academic failure is considered to be lack of ability among schoolchildren in this subject. Among them there are diligent, hardworking people who successfully study in many subjects, but fail, for example, in mathematics or physics.

It makes no sense to constantly give such students bad grades. They work hard even without intimidation or punishment. For such students, a strictly individual step-by-step program is advisable, providing feasible, gradually more complex work in order to bring them to the usual requirements.

The reason for academic failure is sometimes dysfunctional family. Unfortunately, there are still families where there are no normal conditions for the student to work or relax

Underachievement may be related with the problem of the “street”. Rest and outdoor games are necessary. However, there are often so many temptations, and so little parental control and student diligence, that careless students spend most of their time after school in the company of street friends.

Let us note another common reason - the so-called preventive two. Sometimes a teacher gives a bad grade for a student’s refusal to answer. From the outside, this approach seems objective. But when such “twos” accumulate, they, as a rule, develop in the student’s personal plan into a new quality - a state of uncertainty, indifference to assessment. After all, sooner or later, such students, having paid off their debts, will receive a “C” for the quarter. But they simply can’t get “four” anymore, although many of them deserve it.

Requirements for a teacher working with problem children

create a favorable psychological climate in the classroom

don't get irritated, be patient and persistent

when demanding, take into account the student’s real capabilities

each student receives an individual approach; measured pace and volume of work

take into account the zones of proximal development, gradually increase and complicate the load

teach feasible techniques for regulating behavior

diagnostics on all issues of studying personality development and its productivity is the key to successful learning

As a result - a parable.

An old man sits by the side of the road and looks at the road. He sees a man walking, and a little boy can barely keep up with him. The man stopped and ordered the child to bring water to the old man and give him a piece of bread from the store.

– What are you doing here, old man? - asked a passerby.

– Waiting for you! - answered the old man. - They entrusted you with this child to raise, right?

– Right! – the man was surprised.

– So take wisdom with you:If you want to plant a tree for a person, plant a fruit tree.If you want to give a person a horse, give the best horse.But if they entrusted you with a child to raise, then return him winged.

– How can I do this, old man, if I myself don’t know how to fly? – the man was surprised.

– Then don't take the boy into your upbringing! - said the old man and directed his gaze to the sky.

Years have passed.

The old man sits in the same place and looks at the sky.

He sees a boy flying, and behind him is his teacher.

They knelt down in front of the old man and bowed to him.

– Old man, remember, you told me to return the boy with wings. I found a way... See how his wings have grown! - the teacher said proudly and circled his pupil’s wings with affection.

But the old man touched the teacher’s wings, caressed them and whispered:

– I'm more pleased with your feathers...

An underachieving child... A headache for teachers, eternal suffering for parents, a reason for ridicule from classmates. School failure is the inability of a child to master program material.
You can often hear the following phrase from teachers and parents: “They don’t want to study, they’re lazy!” The failure of schoolchildren is not always explained by low mental abilities or reluctance to learn.
Psychologists include the following as the main reasons for academic failure:

1. Various types of deficiencies in cognitive activity.
2. Deficiencies in the development of the motivational sphere of children.

In the first case, difficulties in learning are manifested in the fact that the student poorly understands the material being taught, is not able to assimilate it well, and does not know how to carry out educational activities.
The reasons for the failure of many schoolchildren are the lack of development of methods of educational activity; in insufficient development of mental processes (mainly the mental sphere). Poor academic performance is not always associated with a low level of intelligence. More often, it is an indicator of insufficient readiness for schooling, when a child, during his life before school, has not gone through a certain path of mental development and has not mastered the necessary intellectual skills and abilities.
At the age of 6-7 years, when a child starts school, the difference between the child’s physiological and passport age is extremely large. Individual rates of development of mental processes vary from person to person. Therefore, the first school difficulties arise already in the first grade because the child simply cannot yet do much. Children all want to learn until they realize that they cannot do it the way adults want them to.
Studying at school requires the child to be able to abstract and generalize. If his thinking is predominantly visual and concrete, then difficulties arise when studying the Russian language and mathematics.
Another feature of children's thinking is the inability to simultaneously perform all the required actions when solving problems, and to consider a problem situation from different angles.
All these features of mental activity lead to the fact that educational activities turn out to be ineffective, generating disappointment among schoolchildren. The so-called intellectual passivity is formed - refusal of active mental work.
Not only teachers, but also parents of students can provide invaluable help in overcoming school difficulties. Indeed, in the learning process and especially when there are problems, the child needs support and encouragement, which allows him to understand that he is acting correctly, gives him confidence that failure can be overcome, and you appreciate his efforts. It’s easy to pay attention only to problems, but it’s not easy to see the emerging improvement. But without the support of an adult, the child will not notice him either. Say the words more often: “I am sure that you will succeed...”, “I will help you, and you will definitely do...”, “That’s right,” “Good,” “Well done, you make me happy.” Approval, support and praise stimulate the child, increasing motivation. Harsh treatment (remarks, reproaches, threats, punishments) can improve efficiency in the short term, but in most children it causes resentment, anxiety, and increases the fear of failure, which leads to the opposite effect.
Difficulties in a child's learning at school may be caused by a general weakening of the body. Asthenic conditions (weakness, irritability, tearfulness, increased fatigue), behavioral difficulties, and decreased academic performance can occur in children who have suffered from various infectious and colds (flu, measles, scarlet fever, etc.). Several diseases have a particularly adverse effect on the child’s condition, transferred in a row. These children have decreased academic performance for a long time after the disease. His handwriting will tell you if the child’s condition is deteriorating. Please note: the letters become uneven, very stretched out, or, conversely, the child begins to write them very large, the lines become uneven - all this should make you look at the child more carefully to see if he has health problems. It’s a paradox, but the harder such students try, the longer they prepare their lessons, the worse the results. Everything is explained by the fact that the basis of poor academic performance is not a little diligence, but a weakness of the nervous system, low performance, and increased fatigue. The main help for such children is not additional classes and “sitting until tears in the evenings,” but the organization of a gentle regime, proper rest and sleep, and a reduction in the academic load. It is unacceptable when parents deprive their children of walks as punishment for poor performance. Children should spend 3-3.5 hours outdoors. For weakened children, daytime naps are recommended. You are allowed to watch TV no more than 40-45 minutes a day. By following our recommendations, together with teachers and psychologists, you will help your child overcome his difficulties. After all, the development and health of children depends on the parents, on how correctly, skillfully and persistently they get down to business.

It's nice when your own child studies at “4” and “5”. It’s nice when you enroll children with high quality knowledge into your class; with them you feel satisfaction in your work, you see the results of your own work; I am calm with them when submitting a statistical report on progress to the head teacher of the school.

The Government takes care of gifted children and students with high real educational potential, approving the “Gifted Children” program, and is echoed by regional authorities and the Department of Education. Students who receive certificates for prizes in the Olympiad, scientific and practical conference of schoolchildren feel comfortable and confident. Television is in a hurry to talk about young prodigies...

But according to some special laws of nature, not always understandable to humans, other children live next to the child prodigies - students with low real educational capabilities, poorly or completely uneducated schoolchildren. They are not written about in newspapers, they are not filmed, parents talk about them without pride in their voices, teachers sigh heavily when they accept such a student into class.

And it turns out that there are many more such children than successful ones in education. They want everything that a gifted child feels: attention, a little fame, praise, and a sense of confidence... But in their lives, most likely, the opposite is happening. It seems that school has a unique opportunity to relieve a child of the burden of failures and significantly mitigate this negative factor in personal development.

The underachieving schoolchild is a legendary figure both in life and in pedagogy. Among those who failed were Newton, Darwin, Walter Scott, Linnaeus, Einstein, Shakespeare, Byron, Herzen, Gogol. In the math class, Pushkin was the last to study. Many outstanding people experienced learning difficulties in school and were classified as hopeless. These facts confirm that with a lagging, unsuccessful student, not everything is simple and straightforward. Who is an underachieving student? This is how it is said in the textbook by Ivan Pavlovich Podlasy:

An underachieving student is a child who cannot demonstrate the level of knowledge, skills, speed of thinking and performance of operations that the children studying next to him demonstrate. Does this mean that he is worse than them? Most likely no.

Special examinations of the intelligence of children who are lagging behind in their studies show that in basic indicators they are not only worse, but even better than many well-performing schoolchildren. Teachers are often surprised: how could this or that student, who was listed as a hopeless failure, achieve success. But there is no miracle - it was a child who did not suit what was offered to him at school.

Each of you daily encounters students whom we habitually call lagging behind. You are well aware of their behavior and learning difficulties. Our seminar today will be devoted to discussing our interaction with such children. The first stage will be work to identify the most typical learning difficulties for lagging or low-achieving children.

The presenter hands each teacher five cardboard cards and gives instructions.

Please think about what problems are most common when teaching schoolchildren in the classes where you work. Select these problems and rank them as follows: write down the most typical difficulty on a card, putting the number “one” on it. Write the second most common difficulty on the next card, assigning it the number “two,” and so on until the fifth card.
After five to seven minutes, the presenter collects the cards and processes them (an assistant or one of the participants can help him). As a rule, processing does not take much time. Its results are recorded on a board or tablet, divided into five columns. Of greatest interest are the entries made in the first column, that is, those that lead the ranking.

The most common types of difficulties identified by teachers:

– the children are inattentive in class and are often distracted by other things;

– do not know how to see their mistakes, there is no spelling vigilance;

– have difficulty solving mathematical problems;

– constantly make mistakes in written work, miss letters;

– find it difficult to retell texts;

– very mobile, cannot sit still, etc.

As we have seen, many of you are experiencing very similar difficulties in your teaching work. Maybe because all our underachievers are very similar? But, probably, the experience of each of you will allow you to find a lot of objections to such a statement. Underachievers are very different. And although the problems in working with them really differ little, the causes of these problems are unlikely to always coincide.

Reasons for difficulties in such children

Here are some of the possible options:

– low level of attention;
– low level of development of arbitrariness of processes;
– lack of self-control and ability to act according to the rule;
– poor development of phonemic hearing;
- resentment towards the teacher;
– lack of educational motivation, predominance of gaming motivation;
– fatigue, illness;
– psychological difficulties in the family;
– lack of recognition from classmates;
– low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence;
– poor development of imaginative thinking, short-term memory and/or any modality of perception;
– poor speech development, difficulties in mastering the Russian language (since it is not a native language);
– reduced level of volitional development.

So what kind of underachievers are there?

DOUBLE SILENT

If such a child usually differs in any behavioral characteristics from other children, it is precisely in that he is lethargic, inactive, and inhibited. His indicative reactions, as a rule, are muted, he comes into contact slowly, does not immediately understand what they want from him, and takes a long time to “enter” the situation.
Often this child is overly dependent on an adult, although he is easily controlled by him, literally follows on his heels. He may be overfed, there may be signs of stigmatization and drooling. As a rule, he is not only slow, but also clumsy, poorly coordinated, and underdeveloped motor skills - general motor skills are inharmonious, fine motor skills are poorly developed, and the child has difficulty in dexterous coordinated movements.

In activities, such a child is not only extremely slow, inert, and lethargic, but is also easily slowed down and distracted: he can withdraw into himself and stop doing anything altogether if he is distracted, even by accident. The general level of mental activity and mental tone in such a child is markedly reduced.

At the same time, he is not critical enough both to the situation as a whole and to the results of his activities. He feels, for example, that he is being laughed at, but due to developmental characteristics (including the specifics of the formation of basic affective regulation), he does not understand this and, accordingly, does not react adequately.

In general, the adequacy of such a child’s behavior is clearly insufficient, although this may not appear immediately. Such a child is very convenient: he does not interfere with the work of the class, does not start fights during recess, does not get involved in conflicts, is prone to monotonous activities, is quite efficient if a (domestic) task is available to him, can happily help - clean up, water flowers, etc. .

Now regarding the cognitive sphere. The failure of such a child persistent. He has difficulty learning new types of activities and finds it difficult to transfer learned methods of action (rules) to similar material. Experiences difficulties in memorizing and reproducing material, and is unable to perform comparisons or generalizations. Speech underdevelopment is noteworthy.

He is not able to master the program material not due to laziness, poor speech, memory or low pace of activity, but due to the totality of underdevelopment of all aspects of the psyche. This type of total underdevelopment is defined as brake-inert.

From a psychological point of view, this type of total underdevelopment is also characterized by gross immaturity of all mental processes and functions, the most complex integrative levels of the cognitive sphere associated with generalization, analysis and synthesis.

Due to the child’s low level of contact and inhibition, it is not always possible to correctly assess speech deficiency. The speech of such a child is often primitive in structure. One can state a pronounced underdevelopment of all means of language, which partly determines the impossibility of mediating thought processes with speech, of “incorporating” speech into thinking and turning it into speech-thinking activity, that is, in what L.S. Vygotsky called higher mental functions. There is a significant decrease in both productivity and effectiveness in performing verbal and non-verbal tasks.

Typical for children in this group is the fact that with age, it is the child’s cognitive failure that comes to the fore more clearly, leaving behavioral characteristics in the background. The degree of these difficulties, of course, is directly dependent on the severity of total underdevelopment.

These children sometimes, given their tendency to monotonous inert activity, up to a certain point conditionally satisfy the requirements of the educational environment (even elementary school), especially in terms of behavior parameters.
However, it is well clear that such a child cannot master the program material of either a mass school or a correctional class (KRO or leveling class), and the issue of choosing an educational route must be decided at the PMPK. In addition, he needs the help of a speech pathologist and consultation with a psychiatrist.

CASE TWO: A BALANCED TWO PERSON

Such a child, as a rule, is also dependent and dependent. He is most often focused on assessing another person and is quite correct in behavior. His mood can most often be described as “compassionate.”
Difficulties in mastering program material in such a child may be completely similar to the first case. The child has difficulty learning any new types of activities and is unable to transfer the learned methods of action to similar material. He has mental difficulties, significant problems in logical thinking, speech development, etc.
But we will see other features in the behavior of such a child. He is spontaneous, does not “keep his distance,” and is goofy (as he gets tired, and sometimes without it). He often exhibits elements of “field behavior,” when the child gets involved in everything he passes by and does it completely without criticism. At the same time, he is not angry, not aggressive, quite sociable, and believes that he has many friends.
The lack of criticism and inadequacy in the behavior of such a child is immediately apparent, since he is always in the thick of things, inconsistent in his actions, and often does not understand what is happening.
But we should not forget that these features in our case are necessarily combined with the impossibility of mastering even the basic component of the program material. And the reason for the child’s underachievement lies not in the characteristics of his behavior (underdevelopment of the regulatory sphere, in particular), but both his behavior and the specifics of his affective and cognitive development are symptoms total underdevelopment mental functions and processes.
This option applies to simple balanced type of total underdevelopment.
During the examination, the psychologist notes gross immaturity (scarcity or insufficiency) of all higher mental functions (including speech and thinking activity, various types of memory, attention, auditory and visual gnosis, constructive praxis, etc.).
There is a hierarchy of insufficient development of the child’s cognitive activity. This is expressed in the fact that the most complex integrative levels of the cognitive sphere, associated with generalization, analysis and synthesis, suffer first.
There is a significant decrease in both productivity and effectiveness in performing verbal and non-verbal tasks. The deeper the degree of total underdevelopment, the more the child, as he grows older, lags behind the normative indicators of a given age in all parameters of cognitive development.
And in this case, we will observe persistent underachievement due to the discrepancy between the child’s capabilities and the educational program in which he is forced to study.
Consequently, the task of the school council will be to decide: to send the child to PMPK to resolve the issue of a radical change in the educational route in accordance with the child’s existing capabilities, either (in a situation of parental refusal - which the Education Law allows them - or in the absence of a special correctional institution in the area etc.) look for adequate ways to organize training in a specific educational institution.

CASE THREE: NOT ALWAYS A DOUBLE BITTER, BUT VIOLENT

Such a child is characterized, first of all, by impulsive behavior, motor and speech disinhibition. Moreover, the physical parameters of his development generally correspond to his age.
A child’s behavior sometimes becomes uncontrollable and cannot be regulated even by an adult. The child’s actions are often not only impulsive, but also lacking in purpose.
The child is easily distracted and does not follow instructions given to him. To perform any productive activity, it requires not only external motivation, but also external programming and control of activity. General motor skills, as a rule, are awkward and inharmonious, and fine motor skills suffer both in the tone and in the direction of movement (especially in writing).
Overall performance was slightly reduced. The pace of activity is extremely uneven (primarily due to impulsiveness and difficulties in goal setting). Such a child is more likely to be fed up than exhausted.
Due to impulsiveness and difficulties in goal setting, the adequacy of behavior is also reduced, especially in situations of fatigue. For the same reason, there is a decrease in criticality - both to the results of one’s activities and in general.
However, properly organized external control and sufficient motivation (corresponding to the structure of basic affective regulation and age) can increase indicators of criticality even against the background of fatigue.
We remind you that such a child is a poor student not always, since under properly organized learning conditions (external regulation of activities by a teacher or at home by a mother), he is quite capable of mastering the program material and writing a test or test. That is, strictly speaking, his learning ability in itself is not deficient, but any activity suffers precisely at the level of its voluntary regulation, in particular cognitive activity.
The individual functions and processes themselves: perception, attention, memory, speech-cognitive activity, including verbal-logical thinking, are not primarily deficient.
The point is that it is the voluntary memorization, voluntary attention, other mental processes that should be present to a significant extent by this age arbitrary.
Often, during psychological diagnostics, difficulties in distributing attention to more than two signs at the same time are revealed, although with control these problems are minimized.
The most difficult are comparison and control, as well as all options for performing tasks of a constructive nature based on a model and tasks that require actual programming and building an activity algorithm. But with external organization of activity by adults or in a situation of external programming and control, the effectiveness of performing cognitive tasks may correspond to conditionally normative indicators.
Since in the described case it is the regulatory functions that are deficient (voluntary regulation of activity), when the child needs motivation, programming of activity and its control from the outside (up to 10–11 years of age in severe cases), this type of development was identified as partial lack of formation of the regulatory component of activity.
It is clear that in this case the child can master the program material, but this requires both special conditions and specially organized correctional work to form the deficient element of activity.

CASE FOUR: A DILIGENT FALSE STUDENT

This category of children is sufficiently represented in primary school. As a rule, the cause of underachievement is not the difficulty of organizing the child’s behavior in an educational institution or at home, but the difficulty of mastering the relevant program material.
Most often, these children, already in preschool age, attract attention to the peculiarities of speech development, which can be qualified as the immaturity of all means of language, and come under the supervision of a speech therapist. In addition, of course, there are specifics of the development of the cognitive sphere - features of mnestic activity, perception and speech-thinking activity in general.
Such a child, as a rule, has low speech activity, accompanied by specific development of general motor skills. He is motorally awkward and clumsy. It is these children who often exhibit neurotic manifestations such as tics, enuresis, stuttering, etc.
Somatically, children in this category are also quite unfavorable: a history of allergic reactions is often noted.
The pace of activity may be uneven, often reduced, especially when working with speech material - be it reading or understanding the terms of an arithmetic problem.
Against the background of fatigue, both mild impulsiveness and pronounced lethargy, loss of interest in the proposed tasks may appear. The nature of the activity of such a child differs little from the normative one, although a slight lack of regulation may appear. This most often occurs due to fatigue. In this case, control over one’s own actions decreases more noticeably.
In behavior, both in class and at recess, the child is adequate. Criticality both to the situation as a whole and to the results of one’s activities is, as a rule, sufficient. But sometimes it is speech incompetence that prevents the child from making it clear to an adult that he is noticing his mistakes.
Learning new types of activities and transferring a mastered method of action to similar material may be somewhat slowed down. Especially when it comes to speech (verbal) material.
During an in-depth psychological examination, problems of speech development, including low speech activity, will first of all attract attention. Most often, there is a narrowing of the volume of active attention, problems of a mnestic nature: a small amount of material memorized by ear, the duration of the memorization process itself, difficulties in maintaining the order of presented stimuli.
During reproduction, various kinds of substitutions (paraphasias) of both literal and verbal types occur. The pronounced lack of formation of spatial and quasi-spatial representations leads to difficulties in the correct use of prepositions and agrammatisms in speech, as well as difficulties in word formation.
As already mentioned, there are great difficulties in understanding and updating cause-and-effect relationships and understanding complex speech structures in general. Constructive praxis and performing tasks of a constructive nature are secondarily difficult (due to the lack of formation of spatial representations at all levels).
The so-called non-verbal tasks of the visual-effective and visual-figurative type (in particular, D. Raven's Progressive Matrices) cause specific difficulties, although they can be performed in accordance with conditionally normative indicators. Among the features of the development of the cognitive sphere, it should be noted that significantly more successful completion of tasks of a non-verbal nature compared to tasks of a verbal and verbal-logical type.
Often, during the diagnostic process, difficulties in distributing attention to more than two signs at the same time are revealed.
The general impression that teachers get is that the child is trying, often even doing a lot of extra work, but the effectiveness of the classes is low, since the main reason for the child’s difficulties is partial immaturity of the cognitive component of mental activity(as a result of gross immaturity of spatial and spatio-temporal representations of all levels).
It is clear that such a child needs the help of a number of specialists, primarily a psychologist and speech therapist. A consultation with a neurologist and psychotherapeutic support for both the child and his loved ones are often required.
The question of the possibility of training a “diligent poor student” in a mass, rather than a correctional program, should be decided collegiately at a school council. In difficult cases (especially when speech difficulties are significantly pronounced), it is necessary to think about whether such a child needs to be educated in a type 5 school (for children with severe speech impairments).

CASE FIVE: TYPICAL TWO

Let’s say right away that such a child has two sets of problems at once: problems typical for a child with an unformed regulatory sphere, and problems typical for a child with an unformed cognitive link of mental activity.
Such children are usually adequate in behavior, but quickly get tired, lose interest in what is happening, begin to get distracted, and interfere with other children. Against the background of fatigue, criticality towards the results of one’s activities decreases, the child becomes insufficiently adequate in behavior, and motor and speech disinhibition may occur.
In this regard, at the end of more or less long work - at the last lesson or at the end of a psychological examination - he may begin to demonstrate phenomena that are like two peas in a pod to the characteristics of children with total underdevelopment.
This imposes special restrictions both on the duration of the diagnostic examination of such children and on the methodological apparatus directly used, and must certainly be taken into account when analyzing the results of their activities.
Outwardly, these children look disinhibited, sloppy (“loose”).
The child’s criticality can be either sufficient or significantly reduced, and against the background of severe fatigue, the child often simply refuses to perform any tasks. At this time, criticism of his own behavior is low, but later he may regret his actions.
In the process of a psychologist’s diagnostic work, as a rule, there is a gradual decrease in the child’s adequacy both in relation to the situation itself and in relation to the results of his activities. Often normative at the beginning of work, it decreases, even to the point of pronounced inadequacy, against the background of exhaustion.
When carrying out diagnostics, first of all, there is a lack of operational side of the activity and, at the same time, its regulatory component. Constructive (spatial) analysis and constructive praxis also suffer, and gnostic functions are often deficient.
Speech-cognitive activity is not only characterized by the immaturity of all aspects of language, but is also complicated by the immaturity of logical forms of thinking, including the level of elementary logic.
It is often difficult to work with non-verbal tasks. Their performance may be at the lower limit of the age norm.
Among the features of cognitive development, one should note the insufficiency of the operational side of mental activity itself (operations of comparison, generalization, identification of essential features, etc.). It is also noted that the entire system of spatial representations is unformed and, as a consequence, not only the immaturity of all aspects of expressive speech, but also the difficulty of understanding relatively complex speech structures. This is also one of the factors determining the lack of logical thinking.
As we have already said, in this case, not only the regulatory sphere (as the basis of arbitrary forms of mental activity), but also the cognitive component of activity as a whole turns out to be insufficiently formed in the child. That is why this variant of deviant development was characterized as partial immaturity of mixed type.
In elementary school, children with this type of development are most often found among the underachievers. In order to help such a child, it is necessary not only the interaction of a whole group of specialists: speech therapist, psychologist, neurologist, but also the correct sequence of involving each of them in helping the child.
Most often, it is for such children that KRO (equalization, correction) classes are created on the basis of general education institutions. In more pronounced cases of unformation, it is necessary to refer the child to PMPK in order to resolve the issue of continuing education in a 7th type school.
It can be said with a certain degree of confidence that this particular category of children has low compensatory potential, as a result of which the possibility of adaptation is significantly limited.

CASE SIX: INFANTILE TWO-STUDENT

Such a child looks younger than his registered age, he is lively and spontaneous. Infantility of the psyche often corresponds to an infantile body type with childish plasticity of facial expressions and motor skills.
The emotional and cognitive spheres of these children are, as it were, at an earlier stage of development, corresponding to the mental makeup of a child of a younger age: such a child has brightness and liveliness of emotions, his gaming interests predominate, he is easily suggestible and is not sufficiently independent.
Even at school age, such children are tireless in play and at the same time have low performance capacity and quickly become fed up with intellectual workload. The immaturity of regulatory functions and the motivational-volitional sphere complicates their social adaptation, due to which they are not able to follow the established rules of behavior both in class and during recess.
At the same time, the school difficulties of such a child are clearly visible: tireless in play, he continues to play in class, joining in the work of the class only for a while. He is simply not interested in doing “tedious” exercises, he is motivationally immature and, for all the reasons listed above, does not assimilate the program material, especially when it ceases to be elementary.
Difficulties accumulate, the law of the “snowball” works, and twos begin to dominate among the child’s grades. At the same time, teachers and parents understand well that the child is “not a fool,” and this, in turn, discourages both those and others.
The situation is paradoxical: according to its “technical” indicators, a child, in principle, can master the program material, but in fact, he cannot. If the underachieving children, whom we talked about earlier, master the program material for one reason or another could not, then such a child assimilates the material as if doesn't want, because he is infantile and immature.
The pace of activity can be very diverse and depends, first of all, on the “temperamentological” characteristics of the child: the level of his mental activity and mental tone, as well as on somatic health. Indicators of intellectual development, as a rule, correspond to the level of the child’s current psychophysical age.
As is well understood, regulatory functions are not sufficiently formed in an infantile child, but they are harmonious in relation to emotional and personal development, and all this corresponds to the level of general mental development. Outwardly, this manifests itself in the fact that the nature of the child’s activity corresponds to his appearance and behavior in general, but does not correspond to his passport age.
For a child to learn effectively, it is necessary to have external motivation and control, even greater inclusion of play moments in activities, and granularity and dosing of the presentation of material. If these and other conditions are met, the child’s learning ability will be quite normal, but even the absence of one condition (for example, external motivation) will negatively affect the progress of learning.
With an in-depth psychological examination, the effectiveness of completing the tasks offered to the child will generally correspond to the level of actual psychophysical development that the child “demonstrates.” The development of the cognitive sphere in its entirety in relation to passport age will be rapidly delayed.
Even the speech of such a child has a tinge of infantility, that is, it often contains intonations specific to a younger age, the construction of the phrase structure, as well as “childish” words, which characterizes speech development as delayed. At the same time, functions not mediated by regulatory maturity: memorization, attention - can be normative.
This type of development delayed in its pace was defined as harmonious infantilism, or tempo-delayed type of development. How such a child will study at school, what types of help he will need and who is to blame for the current situation - these are the questions that the school council must find answers to.

CASE SEVEN: FAILURE, BUT IN THE PERSPECTIVE

Let's make a reservation that now we will talk about fairly rare cases when, up to a certain point, a child is doing well, and then, after suffering a concussion, brain contusion, infectious or other disease of the central nervous system, he returns to school completely different.
At first, usually for several weeks, or even months, the student at school is treated with care, caution, he is spared, and this is quite justified. After all, the child has suffered a serious illness, and it takes time for him to get involved in school activities.
Often a child returns to school and begins to study, as if missing one year (less often this is done with boys, which is quite humanly understandable). But how long will it take for the child to “come back” and is it enough to simply start duplicating the program to overcome the problems? Teachers do not know the answer to such questions, because they have no idea what a disease of this type entails and how reversible the changes that have occurred in the child are.
Let us say right away that this type of development was attributed to late damaged, and we will talk not so much about locally damaged, but about diffusely damaged development. This occurs after infectious or inflammatory diseases of the central nervous system: encephalitis, meningitis, and other neurological diseases that affect the child’s brain as a whole.
From the teacher’s point of view, such a child very quickly stops working in class, we are distracted, and often simply “does not hear” what is being addressed to him. He has difficulty mastering even material that is not entirely new.
As already mentioned, teachers tolerate this state of affairs for some time, waiting for the child to get ready and start learning. But this does not happen quickly, and the teacher begins to evaluate the child as an underachiever with all the ensuing consequences. In the diary there appear persistent bad marks, entries about bad behavior, demands for parents to “take care” of the child.
That is, there is a situation when subjective - behavioral difficulties - are added to the objective learning difficulties.
Let's try to consider what manifestations are typical for a child who has suffered a traumatic brain injury or neurological disease.
First of all, these are changes in the operational and technical characteristics of mental activity (tempo, performance). The severity of these manifestations is directly dependent on the severity of the disease and the time that has passed since the disease, as well as on the so-called “brain-wide” manifestations (in fact, the brain’s reaction to the disease or injury itself).
It is for this type of deviant development that the most specific are gross fluctuations in working capacity or a pronounced decrease in it, up to complete inability to perform productive activities, and a sharp decrease in the pace of activity. In rare cases, uneven tempo is observed as a function of fluctuations in mental activity and mental tone (for example, a short-term acceleration of activity, possibly productive). In general, the child’s productivity is low.
As a rule, regulatory functions are pronounced in such a child. damaged, which manifests itself not only in the difficulties of regulating one’s own mental activity both at the cognitive and affective levels, but also in the difficulties of programming and controlling activities in general.
The child may remain adequate in behavior, although we often observe a more or less pronounced decrease in adequacy in the first time after the disease and a very slow and sometimes unstable increase in it in the delayed stages of the disease. Sometimes you can observe quite positive dynamics, especially in a situation of timely and adequate drug treatment and rehabilitation measures.
Similar dynamics of changes are observed in relation to the indicator criticality child. In some cases, hypertrophied criticality may be observed: constant doubts about the correctness of what has been done, returning to the beginning, constant checking with a sample, and sometimes the destruction of an already completed task. More often, the criticality decreases.
The child’s learning ability, as a rule, is sharply reduced, especially in the period as close as possible to the disease, injury (or, conversely, with increasing “experience” of the disease), not only due to gross violations of operational characteristics, but also due to the peculiarities of altered criticality. Moreover, a decrease in learning ability is characteristic both in the case of reduced and in situations of hypertrophied inflated criticality.
A decrease in the dynamics of development is combined with frequent manifestations of inertia of mental activity in general. The pace of development of mental functions and processes after injury, as a rule, slows down sharply, including due to the fact that the operational side of activity has suffered, as well as due to reduced adequacy and criticality.
The volume of auditory-verbal, and often visual and tactile memory narrows, and the memorization process lengthens (in this case we can talk about modally nonspecific disorders of mnestic activity). There is a narrowing of the volume of active attention, and pronounced difficulties in distributing attention and its other characteristics appear. The development of associative and actually logical forms of mental activity is difficult.
Over time, in the absence of positive dynamics of compensation, the child’s behavior becomes specific, which can be characterized by lethargy, inertia, inhibition or impulsiveness of behavioral reactions, a decrease in productive mental activity and its adequacy.
Naturally, such a child requires special attention from all participants in the educational process, which should consist not only in the fact that teachers are aware of the child’s difficulties and take this into account when assessing his knowledge, but also in a special mode of teaching such a child and providing him with special assistance.
A significant role in determining what the regime and type of education for such a child should be belongs to the school council of specialists. From experience working with such children, we can say that most often they have to resort to individual training, but at the same time, they certainly need correctional help from a psychologist and adequate supervision from a specialist in the underlying disease.
Parents and classmates can play a significant role in helping such children.
It should be noted that a child may need a gentle regimen (including individual training) much longer than determined by the attending physician at the clinic. Here, the “neurobiological” point of view of doctors may differ from the point of view of a psychologist and other consultation specialists who observe the child for a longer time, especially during specific loads that cannot be seen at a one-time appointment in the clinic.
Perhaps it is necessary to discuss one more case when a child cannot master program material not due to cognitive difficulties or other deficits, but due to prevailing circumstances. Such a circumstance may be psychological trauma, which entailed a change in the entire structure of affective regulation and, as a consequence, a change in the child’s attitude towards the world and with the world.
In this case, the child’s underachievement will be quite peculiar, perhaps in just one subject, which is in some incomprehensible way “connected” with the child’s condition. Maybe twos will appear in some situations caused by the characteristics of the teacher’s behavior, his statements (sometimes even completely unrelated to the child) or something else that does not (at first glance) have a direct relationship to him. All this can cause bewilderment among teachers, suspicion of some kind of mental disorder, or simply be attributed to age if this happens to a child older than 9–10 years.
It is difficult to imagine that in every school there can be a psychotherapist who can help such a child. Most often about What a child has experienced, it is not the first thing they learn at school, but the requirements for him remain the same. It would be right if, having suspected something was wrong, the teacher turned to a psychologist, and he, in turn, recommended that the child’s relatives contact a psychological center, which should have a professional psychotherapist or child psychiatrist on staff.
Such development, strictly speaking, can also be called damaged, but in this case we are talking about mental trauma or mental illness.

CASE EIGHT: FAILURE BY SOMEONE ELSE’S FAULT

If earlier we talked about children who can not If we have mastered the basic component of the program material, we will now turn our attention to the child who is failing academically through no fault of his own. This baby software material is fundamentally Maybe learn, but the conditions in which he lives do not give him the opportunity to learn.
This is a child either from a dysfunctional or lumpen family in which adults do not care for children, use alcohol or psychotropic drugs, or from a family where the parents are socially inadequate or mentally ill themselves.
Regarding the latter, a living example of a girl comes to mind, whose mother (who, by the way, has a higher education) simply did not take the child to school, making the excuse that the girl was sick. The teacher tried to give her (on those rare days when the parent came to school) additional tasks for the child, completely on her own initiative.
The girl had practically no marks in the magazine, only endless “n/b”s. But if her knowledge had been assessed (for example, when entering a KRO class), then she would not have received more than two points. The girl’s mother refused to interact with the school’s specialists, and there was no full-time social teacher at the school at that time.
This is the case when a child might be happy to learn, but adults do not allow him to do this.
Such a child needs help of a completely different kind than correctional. Here the number one figure should be a social teacher, and in some cases, the guardianship and trusteeship authorities.
In conclusion, it should probably be clarified that in this review, the various “types” of underachieving students and the typological psychological diagnoses corresponding to this underachievement are presented, as it should be in any classifications, in a “pure” form. In practice, a wide variety of degrees of expression of all these “typical losers” and equally diverse combinations of types are possible.
The task of the psychologist is to identify the main cause of academic failure, to translate it from pedagogical (“successful”) language into the language of “accompanying” assistance that can and should be provided to the child, understandable to all consultation specialists.

Reasons for school failure and ways to eliminate these reasons

graduate work

1.2 Psychological characteristics of underachieving schoolchildren

All underachieving schoolchildren are characterized, first of all, by weak self-organization in the learning process: the absence of developed ways and techniques of educational work, the presence of a stable incorrect approach to learning.

Underachieving students do not know how to learn. They do not want or cannot carry out logical processing of the topic they are learning. These schoolchildren do not work systematically in lessons and at home, and if they find themselves faced with the need to prepare a lesson, they either do it hastily, without analyzing the educational material, or resort to repeated reading of it in order to memorize it, without delving into the essence of what they are learning. These students do not work on systematizing the knowledge they are acquiring and do not establish connections between new material and old. As a result, the knowledge of underachievers is unsystematic and fragmented.

This approach to learning leads to systematic intellectual underload, which in turn leads to a significant decrease in the rate of mental development of these students and further increases their lag behind their classmates.

Low self-organization of underachieving schoolchildren is also manifested in a low level of mastery of such mental functions as memory, perception, imagination, as well as in the inability to organize their attention; as a rule, underachieving schoolchildren are inattentive in lessons. When perceiving educational material, they do not seek to recreate it in the form of images or paintings.

Public school teachers are well aware that children who persistently do not master the school curriculum have negative character traits and behavioral disorders. A comprehensive study of the characteristics of the mental development of underachieving schoolchildren - a diagnostic psychological experiment, a detailed biographical study, observation of behavior in lessons and extracurricular activities, conversations with parents and teachers - made it possible to identify a number of conditions that contribute to the formation of distortions in the development of children's personality.

The first and most important factor in the development of negative character traits is the reluctance to learn, the aversion of an underachieving child to all kinds of academic work. Persistent difficulties in mastering the material, a constant feeling of failure naturally lead to the fact that such children avoid the very process of preparing lessons, tear up notebooks, hide textbooks, and cry in response to school demands. They begin to skip classes, lie at home, deceive, say that “nothing is assigned”, and at school - that “I forgot my books at home”, etc. In these actions, emotional distortion begins to be visible, the beginnings of negative character traits already in the first six months, during the first year of study.Such behavioral features are formed very quickly and by the second half of the year such children are very noticeable in public school.

By this time (that is, by the second grade), the next factor is added - conflictual relationships with teachers. At first glance, it seems that these relationships are negative; there is even an opinion that teachers are biased towards underachieving children. Teachers treat them rudely, shout at them, make insulting remarks, complain to parents, discuss with each other openly, in front of other students. At the same time, conversations and careful observation make it possible to understand that this behavior of teachers is caused by helplessness, inability to work with such children, special attention to them, and minimal academic success. All available means are used here. With a raised tone, notations and moralizing, teachers try to attract the attention of low-performing students, include them in academic work, and force them to study.

A persistent conflict situation leads to the fact that, after a short time, underachieving children begin to respond insolently, be rude to the teacher, defiantly leave lessons, and disrupt the educational process. In underachieving schoolchildren, various negative character traits arise and become consolidated - conflict, anger, affective excitability.

Similar problems arise for persistently underachieving children in relation to their parents. Parental behavior is even more complex and contradictory. Most often, parents of underachieving students have complaints about the school, blame teachers (“they teach poorly”), and the curriculum, but when observed in an informal setting, it is clearly visible that these same parents constantly blame their children for academic problems. Tired children are forced to do homework right after school, sit with them, hire tutors, often use physical punishment, shout “mediocre...lazy”, etc. Thus, parents completely lose the trust of their children, and constant conflicts aggravate the home environment and their underperforming children begin to go to the “street". Leaving home becomes constant, returning home late in the evening, children lie in every possible way, trying to get out of the situation. This happens by the end of the third grade.

Many authors base the typology of underachieving schoolchildren on the studied reasons for underachievement. This is what L.S. does, in particular. Slavina: types of underachievers highlight her for a dominant reason. One group of underachievers consists of those students who lack effective motives for learning, another group of children with weak learning abilities, and a third group of children with incorrectly developed academic skills and those who do not know how to work.

The team under the leadership of I.V. Dubrovina combined the psychological reasons underlying academic failure into two groups: the first, which included shortcomings in cognitive activity in the broad sense of the word (the student understands poorly, is not able to master school subjects well, etc.), and the second - shortcomings in the development of the motivational sphere of children (insufficient formation of basic psychological processes).

At primary school age, it is clearly seen that negative character traits and behavioral disorders are formed over time, with an interval of six months after learning difficulties, conflicts with teachers and parents.

Naturally, after conflicts with teachers and parents, underachieving children themselves become aggressive, pugnacious, uncontrollable, and spiteful towards their peers. It is noticeable that in the first grades, more developed and intelligent peers (seeing how teachers and parents treat underachievers) also begin to demonstrate their hostility at every opportunity. This is expressed more subtly, in the form of mockery, offensive nicknames, and ignoring poorly performing students. The responses of underachieving children appear somewhat delayed in time (after 6 months - 1 year), but they manifest themselves very nakedly and rudely. Underachieving schoolchildren fight, use foul language, steal, and skip school. Already by the fourth grade, all the behavior of these children is permeated with negative character traits.

The reasons for a child's failure at school can be very diverse. And it is not necessary to assume that the main reason is the child’s “abnormality” or his lack of diligence. Sometimes the reasons for poor performance may be due to the behavior of others, and not the child himself or a certain situation. In any case, the issue of academic failure must be approached individually and solved not by force, but by careful study of the causes and their elimination.

One of the main reasons for the failure of younger schoolchildren is unpreparedness for learning, which is expressed in three different aspects.

The first aspect: personal readiness. It is expressed in the child’s attitude towards school and educational activities. The child must have developed motivation and good emotional stability.

The second aspect: the child’s intellectual readiness for school. It assumes:

Differentiated perception;

Analytical thinking;

Rational approach to reality;

Logical memorization;

Interest in knowledge, in the process of obtaining it through additional efforts;

Mastery of spoken language by ear and the ability to understand and use symbols;

Development of fine hand movements and visual-motor coordination.

And third: socio-psychological readiness for schooling. This aspect assumes:

Development in children of the need to communicate with others;

The ability to obey the interests and customs of the children's group;

Ability to cope with the role of a student.

There are also “external” reasons, “teacher problems”: the style of relationships with children and parents, the content of training and teaching methods, the personality of the teacher, etc. We are creating a bank of pedagogical information at school, equipping our teachers with methods for conducting problem-based lectures, teaching algorithms, subject Olympiads, partly the search method and other active forms of learning.

Children with various types of mental development delays also have learning difficulties. They are characterized by emotional immaturity, extremely low intellectual performance, increased fatigue, and nervous exhaustion. The principle of the school is to educate each of our students within the framework of the program available to them. We create a rehabilitation educational space for children with physical, intellectual or mental disabilities. From the moment the school opened to this day, the school has had classes for correctional and developmental education, where children also receive an education that meets state standards.

Ignoring types of perception by a teacher can also cause failure. Auditory-oriented children do not perceive well what is written on the board or in a textbook, visually-oriented children may not perceive the teacher’s explanations by ear, and kinesthetic children need to touch everything to perceive information. For the success of teaching all students, we teach immediately taking into account all types of perception. Firstly, each child understands the material presented in his leading system, and secondly, this contributes to the development of other channels of perception in the student and allows them to develop. At the same time, the child perceives the material better and better every time.

Psychological correction for academic failure involves influencing the individual mechanism of knowledge acquisition in a given child, that is, the development of his cognitive abilities in general, and not the mastery of a separate discipline.

Underachieving schoolchildren have two differences from successful ones. The first is differences in levels of cognitive activity. This is manifested in the fact that “high achievers” show a higher interest and readiness to solve various cognitive problems, the ability to independently search for options, highlight the incomprehensible, unfamiliar; are able to formulate questions in order to clarify for themselves what is not clear. “Unsuccessful” people, faced with the need to solve any cognitive task, do not show interest in it, begin to talk about extraneous topics, or say the first thing that comes to mind. At the same time, what is more important for them is not to clarify some information for themselves, but to evaluate their answer to adults, and, accordingly, the questions they ask are not about the essence of the task, but about their answer: “So?” "Did I say that correctly?" However, if children are specifically encouraged to ask questions about what they do not understand, then they “learn to ask” and begin to turn to adults quite often for clarification, even if this was not typical for them before.

Thus, the psychological characteristics of underachieving schoolchildren consist of weak self-organization in the learning process: the absence of developed ways and techniques of educational work, the presence of a stable incorrect approach to learning.

Ways to eliminate school failure will be discussed in the next paragraph.

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