We constantly try to make learning more attractive: interactive lessons, videos, educational games, apps that reward every bit of progress… Everything seems designed to make sure students are never bored. But in trying to make every minute stimulating, are we not at risk of forgetting an essential reality? Learning sometimes means getting through moments that are neither fun nor fascinating.
Does learning always have to be interesting?
A pupil sighs at a set of maths exercises. A student keeps putting off reading a particularly dry chapter. An adult learning a new language grows tired of repeating the same conjugations. What do they have in common? They are bored.
Our reflex is often to try to make this boredom disappear: a livelier explanation, a shorter video, a more playful exercise. This of course makes sense. Teaching that sparks curiosity and makes people want to take part encourages engagement and learning.
But it has a limit: not all knowledge can be acquired with instant enjoyment. Some requires repetition. Some requires long periods of thought, sometimes with no visible result. And much of it involves tasks whose value only becomes clear once a certain level of mastery has been reached.
Trying to systematically remove boredom from learning would mean removing part of the effort needed to make progress. But first we need to know which kind of boredom we are talking about.
Not all boredom is the same
At least three situations can be distinguished:
- The student has already mastered the material: their boredom may signal a lack of intellectual challenge.
- The student is practising a skill they are still acquiring: boredom comes with a repetitive activity whose usefulness is not immediately visible.
- The student no longer understands: when they can no longer follow a line of reasoning, they gradually switch off and lose all interest in the lesson.
These situations call for different responses. Giving more identical exercises to a student who already masters the material risks increasing their disengagement. Conversely, adding more animations will not necessarily help a student who needs to consolidate the basics.
Boredom is therefore a signal to interpret, rather than a problem to eliminate automatically. And sometimes it simply indicates that an activity requires perseverance.
Repetition is not always exciting, but it remains essential
Take a musician. When learning an instrument, they don’t spend all their time playing their favourite pieces. They practise scales, repeat certain passages, correct their movements and start again until difficult movements become natural. These are not the most exciting moments of their practice, but they are the ones that make them progress.
School learning relies partly on the same mechanisms:
- to master a language, you need to come across and reuse vocabulary regularly;
- to progress in maths, you need to apply methods in a variety of exercises;
- to write well, you need to write, reread and correct your mistakes.
Repetition consolidates knowledge and makes certain skills automatic. This is valuable: a pupil who has mastered basic operations can devote more attention to a complex problem; a student who knows their vocabulary well can focus on the meaning of a text rather than on each word.
Of course, repeating something mechanically without understanding guarantees nothing. Repetition must remain relevant and gradual, with feedback on mistakes. But we have to accept that an activity can be useful without being entertaining.
We have got used to filling every idle moment
Only a few years ago, waiting for a bus or standing in a queue often meant doing nothing. Today, these moments are quickly filled by a phone: a podcast while walking, a video during a break, checking messages as soon as an activity becomes less interesting.
This abundance has many advantages, including access to educational resources that used to be much harder to reach. But it also changes our relationship with idle moments. When a task requires prolonged effort and offers little immediate stimulation, the temptation to move on to something else is very strong. A student stuck on an exercise can end up on social media in a matter of seconds.
It would be an exaggeration to say that screens have made us unable to tolerate boredom: research does not support such a general conclusion (we discuss this in “Is our attention span really getting shorter?”). However, the easier it is to interrupt an activity, the more important it becomes to stay engaged in a task, even when it becomes less stimulating. This ability can be developed, just like other study habits.
The moment you want to give up
Imagine a student facing a physics problem. They read the question, try a first method, realise it doesn’t work, then start again. After ten minutes, they still haven’t found the answer.
Several reactions are possible: look at the solution straight away, give up on the exercise, or ask someone for the answer. But they can also take a few more minutes to analyse what is blocking them, identify the useful data and try another approach.
This search time is not always pleasant. It sometimes comes with frustration, doubt or impatience. Yet as long as it stays suited to the student’s level, this effort can lead to a deeper understanding. Researchers speak of desirable difficulties: difficulties that, in the right conditions, promote lasting learning.
Be careful, though, not to confuse a productive difficulty with an excessive one. Leaving a student alone for an hour with a problem completely beyond their reach serves no purpose: discouragement takes over. The key is to find the right balance, a challenge demanding enough to require effort but accessible enough to allow progress.
This is one of the roles of a teacher or a coach: knowing when to let a student search, when to give a hint and when to explain again.
What if we stopped trying to make everything fun?
Interactive tools have their place. A game can help explain an idea, a video can illustrate a complex phenomenon, an app can encourage regular practice. But their value depends on what they really bring to learning. An activity can be great fun without leaving much behind; a classic exercise can be extremely effective.
The risk appears when attractiveness becomes a goal in itself, and a method is judged mainly by the enjoyment it provides rather than by the knowledge it helps build. The two do not always go together.
This is not about making lessons dull or ignoring the pleasure of learning: sparking curiosity and giving meaning to knowledge remain fundamental. But good learning is not measured only by the enjoyment felt during the activity. It is also measured by what you are able to understand, remember and do afterwards.
Learning to persevere too
For parents and teachers alike, the challenge is sometimes to resist the urge to remove every frustration. When a child complains that an exercise is boring, it is tempting to suggest something more fun or help them finish quickly. It is better first to understand what is causing the reaction:
- is the exercise too easy? too hard? too repetitive?
- does the child understand what they have to do?
- are they simply tired?
If the task is suitable and the student has the necessary knowledge, encouraging them to keep going a little longer helps them develop their tenacity. This can involve modest goals: finishing three exercises, working for fifteen minutes, or trying another method before asking for help.
The aim is not to value effort for its own sake, but to show that some results take time, and that satisfaction sometimes comes after the work is done. This is often how lasting motivation is built.
In My Sherpa’s private tutoring , helping a student progress also means gradually leading them towards more independence, by adapting the exercises, the pace and the level of support to their needs. Good support does not always mean making the task easier: it also means helping the student become able to overcome certain difficulties on their own.
Boredom is neither a goal nor an enemy
We should not conclude that a boring lesson is necessarily a good one. Monotonous teaching that is poorly adapted or out of touch with students’ needs can cause real disengagement. And when a student is bored all the time, it is important to look for the causes.
Boredom does not improve learning in itself. What helps is learning to keep going with a useful activity despite the lack of immediate reward, accepting some repetition and spending time on problems that are not solved instantly. There is a difference between sitting through a lesson that brings nothing and persevering with demanding work whose purpose you understand.
In constantly trying to capture students’ attention, we risk forgetting that learning also means being able to direct that attention deliberately towards activities that do not capture it on their own.
We do not need every minute of learning to be fascinating. We need those minutes to help us progress. And that means, from time to time, accepting being a little bored.
Getting support
Does your child switch off as soon as an exercise gets tough, or give up when the work becomes repetitive? At My Sherpa, an educational advisor first takes stock with you, then chooses a coach who adjusts the level of difficulty and helps your child persevere and build solid study skills . Lessons take place at home anywhere in Belgium, or online.
