What Our Education System Gets Wrong About Purpose

There are many reasons young people nowadays lack direction and purpose in their lives. But experts agree that the primary cause is our education system as it stands. The government-run school system creates a one-size-fits-all process that is obsessed with test scores, college and career readiness, and gathering data.

Ancient Wisdom Still Applies

Two and a half thousand years ago, King Solomon said, "Educate youth according to his way, then when he gets old he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6). The proverb clearly understood that each individual is special and that one size does not fit all. It also understood that if you want an adult to remain fulfilled with what they do, they must be educated according to their own unique way.

Today, thousands of years later, thought leaders in adolescent psychology are saying a similar thing. The late Peter Benson at the Search Institute, William Damon at Stanford, and Sir Ken Robinson have all pointed out that we need to help youth find their own inner calling and purpose.

Square Pegs in Round Holes

What is required is a change of attitude. Instead of trying to fit our students into a one-size-fits-all type of education, we need to start seeing young people as individuals who have their own set of unique talents, abilities, passions and purposes.

Students who have a passion for dance or film should not be forced to spend the same amount of time doing science and math as a student who wants to become an engineer. Teachers should take their students' passions and long-term goals into consideration when they educate them.

The Shape Sorter Analogy

Think about a child playing with a shape sorter. The child needs to: select a brick, identify its shape, find a corresponding hole, and place the correct brick into it. Most people skip a step in this process with their own lives — they fail to look at their own shape. They then try to fit themselves into slots that don't match.

People contort themselves to fit into relationships, jobs, careers and vocations that, had they first known the dimensions of their shape, they would have seen was a bad fit. This process is deeply unfulfilling and often very painful.

The Problem with Interest Inventories

Currently many high schools use Interest Inventories developed initially in 1927 by psychologist E.K. Strong. While easy to administer, this method has significant drawbacks:

• The student rarely understands how results were reached
• Results are not based on the student's own decisions and self-exploration
• These tests only take interests into consideration — they don't talk about passions or purpose
• Often results are wrong and lead the student astray
• Students are asked to choose between interests they've never experienced

It is unreasonable to race through the career-finding stage with a sixty-question Interest Inventory that takes about fifteen minutes to complete.

A Better Way

Instead of helping youth choose a career, we should help them find their calling and purpose in life. Instead of supplying youth with a career path based on a few clicks of the mouse, we propose taking them through a process of their own inner, self-exploration so that they are able to find the answers from within themselves.

In our model, you are the expert. You know yourself better than anyone else can. All we do is provide you with the framework and coaching necessary to embark on your own journey of self-exploration so that you can discover from within yourself your purpose in life.