The reason why most adults are not very motivated when it comes to learning is because school has killed their learn drive. The recurring dreams may very well be a sign of a traumatic experience.
You can read more here: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Learn_drive
Instead of putting pressure, parents should take away this very crippling aspect of today's schools by telling their children that grades are not so important and that the often required cramming does more harm than good.
If a child's learn drive survives school it will surpass many of its peers futher down the road.
> My kids however are leisurely creatures
How so? They are forced every weekday under duress of the law to go to a place they didn't choose to be. If they don't perform in their forced labor they are put into more forced labor. They have to listen to you and you probably very often take away their agency to do what they desire. Kids do have more "free" time, but that time is not actually free. But the way the can spend is very narrow. But more time does not equal better.
You grew up middle or upper class and the person you’re responding to didn’t, or had no or very bad relations with their family such that they didn’t or couldn’t help.
Don’t forget that school is the most orderly environment lots of children experience, the one where they’re most likely to be around educated people, intellectual stimulation, the least violent, the one where they’re reliably fed. Without the pretense that it’s about education that would be hard to keep up.
Comparatively most adults have incredible comfortable lives. Besides going to work they can basically do whatever they want. There is no pressure to strive for anything. It's baffling to me how people can lay such high pressure on their children but let themselves go in their own life.