Despite the abundance of papers on contemporary education that provide general guidelines for the improvement of class, students still mostly express extrinsic motivation towards learning and associate class with the experience of boredom. An overview of literature shows that in reality teaching methods that are based on traditional educational philosophies are mostly practiced in class. That type of class is mostly connected with the decline of motivation for learning in students. As a key element of student motivation, grades are often mentioned as a condition for further education or gaining compliments and rewards. As weaknesses of contemporary educational philosophies, not enough focus on facts and too much focus on how well students feel is mentioned. An overview of literature about class in Croatia supports the thesis that the most often paradigm of education in Croatia is programme-centrism (Matijević et al., 2017). With an overview of educational philosophies, a distinction between philosophies and everyday practice is made. Based on an overview of literature on curricular and extracurricular activities it can be concluded that extracurricular activities are connected with a better approach of students towards learning. Extracurricular activities show more characteristics of contemporary educational philosophies than curricular. Despite that, class cannot be reduced to only extracurricular activities. Students need a certain (basic) compulsory education so they can recognize which field of education they are most interested in. The final part of the paper consists of suggestions to improve or keep the motivation of students.