It is a mistake to assume that students with learning problems are unmotivated. The problem lies
in the direction, not the strength of motivation. Children are not born unmotivated. They don't
wake and say, "Today I'll do a lousy job. I'll be unmotivated." Just the opposite—like all of us
students with learning problems are highly motivated to protect themselves from the threat of
failure and the embarrassment and loss of self-esteem it produces. This underlying dynamic was
poignantly described in Abrams's (1991) discussion of students with reading problems: