Many students feel like they’re just “doing school,” jumping through hoops for grades rather than genuinely learning. This disengagement, combined with a youth mental health crisis and a rapidly changing world, signals the need for a new approach. What if we could reimagine education to empower students, help them discover their true potential, and prepare them for a future beyond the classroom?
Revealing the overlooked pressure on students
“People don’t go to school to learn. They go to get good grades, which brings them to college, which brings them a high paying job, which brings them happiness—or so they think.” This comment from a tenth grader, shared in a 2024 Challenge Success survey, reflects the experience of many students.The survey revealed that 45% of students reported they were simply just “doing school,” while only 13% said they felt fully engaged. Too many students view school as a series of hoops to jump through, uncertain of any purpose beyond preparing for the next requirement.
Guiding students to reach their full potential
In our forthcoming Solution Tree book, Agents of Impact, which I co-authored with Ron Beghetto and Yong Zhao, we contend that all young people have the potential to make positive impacts–- on their families, schools, communities, and even the wider world. Examples of this potential are all around us, and they extend beyond well-publicized figures like Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg, Mari Copeny (“Little Miss Flint”), and Emma Gonzalez. As we describe in our book, students are founding local environmental and social justice organizations, creating service apps, recruiting volunteers for food banks and elder communities, organizing fundraisers for various causes, inventing devices that help those in need, starting businesses, and much more.
The powerful limits of traditional school structures
Concerningly, many of these initiatives are pursued by young people outside of school. While some schools require community service to graduate, these activities may not reflect students’ own interests or initiative. For decades, educators have been constrained by standardized curricula and state assessments, often relying on district-prescribed teaching scripts. Finding the time and energy to redesign classes in ways that prioritize opportunities for students to become agentic problem-solvers is a challenge that few can fully manage.
The urgent need for a new approach
Rather than completely abandoning the conventional curriculum, we suggest revisiting what a “good education” means in today’s world. A multitude of factors in the broader environment demand that educators transform students’ learning experiences. Consider these conditions:
- An unprecedented global youth mental health crisis with historically large numbers of students experiencing anxiety and depression.
- A rapidly evolving job market, where new technologies are creating new types of jobs while older ones disappear at an unprecedented rate.
- Employers are increasingly prioritizing “soft skills” such as cultural awareness, collaborative skills, communication skills, problem-solving ability, and the capacity and flexibility to work with evolving technologies, especially generative AI and robotics.
- A host of major global challenges that students are inheriting, including climate change, persistent geopolitical conflicts, nuclear threats, population migrations, growing economic inequality, and the digital divide.
Four powerful questions to prepare students for the future
We hope to engage others in thinking about and discussing these questions:
How can we enable all students to discover their potential?
Currently, school dominates most of students’ time, occupies much of their thinking, and drains their energy. These are the same resources they need if they are to explore, discover, and pursue their interests. Only by doing this can students discover their true potential, especially their ability to make a positive impact on others. Feeling that they matter and are valued is essential. As 2020 research by Lara Aknin and Ashley Whillans shows, people derive greater joy and satisfaction through serving others than by doing things for themselves.
How do we make developing “soft skills” as important as cognitive skills?
According to the 2025 Future of Jobs Report from the World Economic Forum (WEF), helping students become more resilient, flexible, self-aware, motivated, collaborative, and curious will serve them in the present as well as in the future. Given the uncertainty about the future of work, these dispositions and skills are unlikely to be replicated by machines and will remain relevant for jobs that do not yet exist. The report emphasizes that combining cognitive, interpersonal skills, and self-efficacy skills is critical to building an agile, innovative, and collaborative workforce.
How can we better connect school learning to real-world challenges and the skills employers increasingly value?
As Lauraine Langreo observed, in a 2025 Ed Week article, research shows that students learn best when they can see the relevance of what they are learning. Career academies succeed because they allow students to apply learning to genuine problems, providing a clear rationale for their studies. In a 2024 Forbes magazine article, Dr. Cheryl Robinson argued that employers are looking for evidence of candidates’ ability to solve problems and demonstrate soft skills. As a result, degrees and academic accomplishments are becoming less critical. According to a 2018 CNBC report, Google, Apple, IBM, Bank of America and eight other major companies no longer require college degrees. Recently, Tesla, Delta Airlines, Verizon, and Netflix joined the list.
How can we better foster collaboration and a sense of community?
Humans are social beings who thrive when working together. Creating well-designed teams to tackle real-world problems enables students to experience the value and rewards of collaboration.
In short, how can we make the experience of school more meaningful, better aligned with what genuinely engages students, and equips them with the skills and knowledge needed for an uncertain future?
A school built for learning and growth
So what would a reimagined school experience look like? At its core, it would include these four ‘C’s:
Convergent thinking: Students consulting with teachers, their peers, and AI to design and guide their own learning experiences.
Creativity: Multiple opportunities for students to exercise their agency to make decisions that affect them, and pursue their interests and talents. This increases their sense of self-control, confidence, and sense of mattering.
Community: Strong connections with the local and global communities to identify and collaboratively address authentic problems. Supervised internships position students both to learn applied skills while discovering meaningful challenges to tackle.
Collaboration: Using technology such as generative AI as co-planners, co-researchers, co-creators, while students bring uniquely human capacities such as emotional intelligence, imagination, critical thinking, ethical reasoning, leadership, and nuanced communication.
For most schools, realizing this vision of education would require a radical shift in priorities. It would also require educators and families to push back against policies that mandate standardized curriculum and assessments. While some teachers have already transformed their roles, many others would need both the freedom and training to move from primarily conveying knowledge to serving as coaches, guides, and mentors.
Guiding change to support learning and growth
The real question isn’t whether education will change–-it will have to. The challenge lies in how we guide that change to most benefit students. Key steps include:
- Facilitating regular, moderated conversations among educators, parents, communities, and policymakers.
- Recognizing the need for new approaches, supporting innovative efforts, and conducting research to evaluate their impact.
- Embracing technology thoughtfully, neither resisting nor passively accepting it, but actively engaging with emerging tools to shape positive outcomes.
Above all, the most important thing is to prioritize student development and well-being in every decision and initiative.
About the educator
G. Williamson McDiarmid is the Dean and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Distinguished Chair of Education at East China Normal University in Shanghai, China.
