Pablo Del Teso teaches screenwriting in universities and specialised courses, but lately, something’s changed. It’s not just the content or the curriculum, it’s the students. In this Business Insights Series interview, we dug deep into the emotional and structural challenges of modern teaching, especially in creative disciplines.
This is our second article with Pablo. In the first, Keeping the soul in storytelling: Creativity, AI, and the human drive to connect, we explored how storytelling thrives at the intersection of emotion and craft, even in an age shaped by algorithms. Now, we zoom in on the classroom itself.
From disengaged learners and short attention spans to university policies that don’t help, this conversation pulls no punches.
We talked about the loss of delayed gratification, why cheating is more appealing than learning, and what it’s like trying to teach storytelling to students who can’t focus long enough to watch a film. Pablo doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but he shares raw, honest reflections from inside the classroom, and they resonate far beyond education.
The vanishing motivation: 80% don’t care, 20% really do
Let’s start with the obvious: motivation is tanking. Pablo was blunt about it. “Most of the students, especially in the last decade or so, I see that they are less and less motivated, they put more effort in trying to cheat than in trying to learn.”
Academic research confirms this motivation crisis. A comprehensive study published in 2020 by the International Centre for Academic Integrity revealed that over 60% of university students admit to some form of cheating, with 13.8% confessing to word-for-word copying. As one researcher noted, “Academic dishonesty is a common problem at universities around the world,” with studies across Canada, Sweden, Australia, and Germany all reporting similar troubling trends. This isn’t just Pablo’s observation’s a documented global phenomenon.
The issue isn’t solely student behaviour, but rather their underlying mindset. Students are not entering the classroom with a desire for learning. Many see education as an obstacle, not an opportunity. And this trend isn’t limited to film school, it reflects a growing generational shift where the learning process itself is seen as optional, tedious, or worse, irrelevant.
This shows up in ways that are both subtle and jarring. I asked Pablo about cheating and short attention spans, and he told me: “Some of them don’t even want to watch a film. Maybe I give them Finding Nemo or Up, something entertaining. Nothing. They just don’t care.”
Think about that. We’re not asking for academic essays or lectures. We’re talking about watching a mainstream animated film, a basic, enjoyable starting point. Still, many students refuse to engage. Not because they can’t. Because they won’t.
The implications are staggering. If students won’t even consume the content they’re meant to learn from, how can we expect them to analyse, interpret or create? If you don’t engage the senses, you can’t stimulate the mind. And without that foundation, no framework, no matter how brilliant, can take root.
What we’re seeing here isn’t laziness. It’s a deeper form of disengagement, one that requires a fundamental rethinking of how we connect with students in the first place.
A culture of instant gratification, no patience for process
Students today want results. Fast. The idea of a long, messy, rewarding journey is out of fashion. Waiting, refining, and reflecting – those are now viewed as inefficiencies, not virtues. Why toil for months perfecting a script when you can generate one in seconds or mimic someone else’s in minutes?
Pablo pointed to a deeper issue. “They want the reward of making movies or writing scripts, but they don’t want the hassle… They lost the ability of delaying the reward.”
And that loss isn’t trivial. Delayed gratification is a core muscle in both creativity and life success. It’s what enables someone to write a second draft, revisit a weak scene, or push through moments of self-doubt. Without it, students expect a shortcut through every challenge, and burn out or give up when it doesn’t appear.
Young people today have really different attention spans, and it’s not just a trend. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and mobile games with their constant rewards are big reasons for this. It’s a real issue for teachers, who have to change how they teach to keep kids interested. It’s harder for students to focus and stick with things, which affects their learning and how they grow as people.
All this short-form content makes them expect quick changes and instant results, so it’s tougher for them to focus deeply or solve complex problems. We need to rethink education and figure out how digital life is changing how kids pay attention.
He said it best: “It’s not very stimulating for the teacher to make that emotional report… It’s exactly the opposite.”
Imagine showing up week after week with passion and preparation, only to be met with silence, shortcuts, or outright indifference. If the teacher is exhausted and uninspired, how can we expect students to be the opposite? We can’t. And that’s the quiet tragedy unfolding in classrooms worldwide.
When universities reward tuition, not learning
Teachers want to teach. Students, often, don’t want to learn. And universities? They mostly want to avoid conflict. The result is a silent standoff where everyone involved plays it safe, except the quality of education, which quietly declines.
Pablo put it plainly: “If the parents don’t want me to teach them anything… if the students don’t want to learn anything… and if the authorities don’t want me to have any problems with the students, what am I supposed to do?”
This isn’t a failure of individual effort. It’s systemic. Educators are caught between institutional policies that prioritise inclusivity and customer satisfaction, and a growing student body conditioned to resist discomfort. When these two forces collide, standards give way, and those who demand more, teachers who challenge, question, and expect, are seen as the problem.
It’s a strange inversion of responsibility. The expectation is no longer that students rise to meet the challenge but that the challenge be softened to match the students. When excellence becomes optional, mediocrity becomes policy.
And the pressure goes beyond grades. Pablo shared that parents now regularly intervene in university-level matters: questioning low scores, blaming professors, even complaining to academic authorities as if they were still in secondary school. “In the last years I have seen parents coming to the university to talk to the authorities as if they were in a high school to complain because some teacher didn’t give them good grades.”
What we need are policies that back educators when they uphold quality. We need leadership that views rigour as a form of respect, not punishment. But what we often get are performance reviews based on student satisfaction surveys, as if education were a product, and discomfort a defect.
What actually works? Engagement, emotion, and earned respect
When Pablo teaches specialised courses, where students choose to be there, everything changes. “I am especially tough with the ones that I know can go a little bit further… And I get really, really good results.”
These are the classrooms where real learning happens. Not because the content is different, but because the mindset is. Students arrive curious, not coerced. They want to learn, to grow, to be challenged, and Pablo meets them there with high standards and real expectations. The result? A creative space where intellectual friction breeds insight.
The magic? Engagement. Emotional connection. Storytelling as a tool, not just a subject. In this context, feedback becomes conversation. Assignments become discoveries. Students don’t just show up, they contribute.
And it’s mutual. “They push me as well… they make questions that nobody had asked me before and I hadn’t asked myself that.”
Teaching becomes a two-way street. The relationship becomes a form of mentorship. There’s energy in the room. Dialogue, not monologue. And the students, years later, come back to thank him, not just for what he taught, but for what he believed they could become.
This experience has shaped Pablo’s approach. He now concentrates his efforts where they matter most. “OK, so I’m going to try to concentrate on that 20% that really want to learn.” It’s not resignation, it’s realism. A form of educational triage that preserves both his energy and the integrity of his work.
Technology, entertainment, and the dopamine crisis
We joked about TikTok and phone games, but the reality is serious. These platforms train the brain for surface-level consumption and fast rewards. They offer stimulation without substance, novelty without effort, and for many young people, that has become the baseline for how they interact with the world.
Pablo said, “Most of the stimuli younger generations get don’t require them to think or solve anything.”
And he’s right. When attention is constantly diverted, curiosity has no time to mature. When everything is delivered instantly, why develop the skills to struggle, to question, or to explore?
That’s a problem for education, but it’s also a societal one. If students lose the capacity for deep focus, problem-solving, and critical thinking, then what future are we preparing them for? A future where no one builds, reflects, or repairs? A future of passive consumption rather than active participation?
We explored whether teaching should adapt or resist this shift. I argued that problem-solving can still be inherently stimulating. Pablo agreed, but added: “Tell me when you use Instagram, what problems do you solve?”
It’s a fair question. And one we need to answer with urgency, not just as educators, but as parents, leaders, creators, and citizens. If we want future generations to be capable of more than swiping and scrolling, we must teach them to stay with the hard questions, to sit with the discomfort, and to find joy not just in answers, but in the pursuit itself.
Conclusion: Stop blaming teachers, start fixing the system
Pablo’s experience highlights a painful truth: great teachers are no match for broken incentives and disengaged learners.
The students haven’t failed. The teachers haven’t failed. The system has.
What gives us hope? That 20% of students who still care. The joy of emotional connection in the classroom. The power of storytelling. The ability to reach someone, truly reach them, with a well-crafted scene, question, or challenge.
As Pablo said, “I know that there are some principles and you can teach them and they can learn how to apply those principles or find new ways of doing what they do.”
That’s the part we hold on to.
About the Author
Vlad writes about automation, operations, and the little tweaks that make a big difference in how businesses run. A former game designer turned founder, he now helps teams fix broken workflows and spot the revenue leaks hiding in plain sight.
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