DD11 is only just now 'seeing' the payoff for doing well grade-wise.
Now, she's always been fairly motivated to bring home honor roll grades. But it's only this year that she has a sense of urgency to differentiate an A from, say, a B... and to connect the fact that bombing a midterm will make the latter more likely than the former.
She also is starting to understand larger goals-- and that there is a self-determined path in the distance.
I was so incredibly relieved when she finally got a taste of that in selecting high school coursework. At least she got a chance to really choose some electives, etc.
I pointed out that college will be like that, too.
Anyway. Just mentioning that, depending upon maturity and personality, I think that it's probably fine to begin mentioning that kind of long-term view of things to kids when they are 8-10. Well, EG+ kids, anyway. As long as it doesn't seem to cause them undue stress and fuel perfectionism that is UNHEALTHY. DD has never met a challenge that she couldn't meet, so that wasn't an issue. It gave her much-needed hope while she was slogging through middle school requirements that were just plain drudgery.
What has been an issue (and continues to be one) is that her basic level of maturity sometimes gets in the way of her ability to 'see' the relative importance of all of the little things-- and how those come together to give her the "big" things (like those stellar report cards). What's one lousy week at school, right? Except that it's 1/16th of a semester. That's the part that is still missing.
What can I say-- she's eleven. <shrug>
ETA: I think your second concern is quite a valid one, too, however. I see that my DD tries so hard to be "like" her peers. She really studies media portrayals of adolescents, which naturally gives her some pretty skewed attitudes about "normal" and acceptable behavior by OUR standards. "Hating" school is one of those things. She sometimes says that-- but when you probe, even minimally, you find out in a hurry that she definitely doesn't really mean what she's saying. She's just trying to buy herself more street cred with peers that are significantly older than she is, I think.
"I don't care" can also be shorthand for existential depression, of course... or part of the fitting in and being cool with angsty-adolescent classmates, if you happen to be several years younger than most of them. Was your DS particularly happy/unhappy with his previous placement? What is his general attitude about the change in placement?
