"Lazy" is also what kids with ADHD are labelled. I think "lazy" is a cop-out explanation, since it doesn't actually explain anything. Often the incentives are aligned so that it's in the kid's best interest to put some effort into homework. If they're not doing it, treat it like a debugging program: why aren't they responding to the incentives? Could be depression, ADHD, perfectionism/fear of failure, or a bunch of other things.
They're not mutually exclusive. I was ADHD diagnosed, but I'm also lazy. Even medication didn't make me less lazy. But then I became a Haskell programmer, and now "laziness is a virtue."
edit: Not making light of ADHD or my own struggles. Medication and self-awareness helped me improve from a B/C student into an A student. But I do find that as an adult I'm able to function without medication because instead of constant studying for tests I'm constantly learning and applying my knowledge.
You definitely do get some kids that are lazy though. And I know this because I was one of them. I should have made more of an effort at school, but instead I coasted on natural ability. Which has meant that I'd had to put double the effort in later life to make up for the advantage I should have given myself at school.
However I do agree with you that we shouldn't be branding kids as "lazy" without investigation first.
> I think "lazy" is a cop-out explanation, since it doesn't actually explain anything.
In response to sibling comments, I want to QFT this. Laziness, as a diagnosis, has no explanatory power. It's a useless descriptor. It doesn't tell you how to fix it. You can self-diagnose as lazy all you like: that's, wait for it, intellectual laziness.
Trust me, laziness is a real thing; even when everything in the world points towards doing the work being the best thing for you, you just can't be bothered.
Of course it's a real thing. He never said it wasn't. What he said was that it doesn't explain anything, and that's true.
Laziness is a symptom, not a cause. It's like diagnosing someone with a "cough". It may be correct, but it's pointless, because it's obvious and tells you absolutely nothing about what to do.
At what point is a personality merely a symptom? If everything about us is a result of our ailments, and all of our ailments have treatments, how does a person know which parts of his personality are him and which aren't? What am "I" then?
I would probably say that we can classify our personality as the difference in sets of what anyone with our ability and in the same situation would do, and what we do.
That being said, our ailments could probably be categorized by affecting all aspects of our life equally and in full measure of time (i.e something that doesn't fluctuate across the years is probably an untreated ailment).
You're the little sane bit sitting on top herding the various cats of brain lobes, psychological disorders and just plain basic insanity into acting as a useful whole every day.
A sufficiently self-managing nutter is indistinguishable from a genius.
