Two Ages of Change

that life has no meaning or purpose.18 In The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life, Stanford University professor William Damon conducted extensive interviews with young Americans and found that only about one in five of them could “express a clear vision of where they want to go, and what they want to accomplish in life, and why.”19 Although about 60 percent had taken part in “potentially purposeful activities,” they did “not have any real commitment to such activities or realistic plans for pursuing their aspirations.”20 Worse still, about a quarter “express no aspirations at all,” and in some cases, “they see no point in acquiring any.”21

With around a quarter to over a half of students feeling disengaged, depending on the measures used in different surveys, disengagement isn’t yet an epidemic. You could even say that, given all the distractions available to young people these days, keeping up to three-quarters of them engaged in school is something of an accomplishment. Still, no society can lose a quarter of its students and expect to fare well in the future.

Two Ages of Change

Student engagement has been under the radar in many countries’ educational policies for a long time. However, by around 2015— even before the coronavirus pandemic provided new insights into how young people experienced learning at school and at home— educational goals that look beyond academic achievement alone were already moving to the forefront of global

We are moving policy agendas. In effect, we have begun to from an Age of witness a transition between two major ages Achievement and of educational change. We are moving from Effort to an Age an Age of Achievement and Effort to an Age of Engagement, of Engagement, Well-Being, and Identity. In

Well-Being, many ways, this shift has been accelerated by and Identity. the global pandemic.