October 9, 2023

It can sometimes feel like there is an unnecessary amount of fear-mongering in the education space. From students falling behind because of COVID-19 to uncertainty about the future, there seems to be a greater emphasis on what can go wrong instead of what can go right. Perhaps it is time for us to highlight all the good that is happening, and provide content and tools that can help our students to be more optimistic about their education and their future. 

Young people today are questioning their world, and clearly have a very different set of values and goals than some of the older generations.  This is a good thing. For instance, youth tell us that they want meaningful work. It suggests people are starting to think of success more in terms of time and work/life balance than materialism. They care about the environment, social justice, and about living a fulfilling life. They’re an admirable generation. 

One of the greatest opportunities we have as educators is to provide a vision for how we might support students to build a better world. We need new narratives on what’s possible so that we can evolve from our preconceived notions of how the world works. This signals providing students with alternative ways of doing things, and with facilitating more pathways to action. As someone who works in the changemaker space, I have long been a part of the growing movement to build a social economy. This means ditching the non-profit versus for-profit dichotomy, and creating room for students to reimagine how organizations, businesses, and entities might be rewired to “do good”.

For instance, Doughnut economics provides a lens for us to rethink our system and acts as a compass for how we might achieve human prosperity within the means of our planet. It encourages us to live and work in a manner where people and the planet can thrive yet we still prosper. It helps individuals imagine the ecological ceiling we must place on how we go about our work as well as the social foundation we build that work upon. This sort of compass helps us envisage better ways of going about business, policy, and our day-to-day activities. 

And a new vision is necessary. Just this past week, the UAW had a strike with headlines pitting Americans against one another.  Once again the usual rhetoric spilled out asking citizens to take sides. Did they care about the environment OR the economy? During the pandemic, it was health OR wealth. Tools like the Doughnut help us to understand that we can indeed do both, and why it is critical we think more holistically when faced with challenges. Making pivots that fulfill the 3 Ps (people, planet, and prosperity) is key to the success of our society. Instead of sparking fear and anger, we need to help people understand that change is a constant of life and to generate dialog that allows people, communities, and organizations to find the opportunity in challenges. 

There is ample opportunity in the education space to facilitate new dialogs on the future of work, and how our systems might evolve. Discussions around doughnut economics, social economies, or regenerative practice can give students a framework for how we can achieve the 3 Ps (people, planet, and prosperity).  These concepts can be interwoven into the curriculum from a wide range (e.g. language arts, statistics, economics, finance, business, or history).  The first thing we must do as educators is to educate ourselves on these new paradigms to see how they might fit into our standards. 

Then there are countless opportunities we might craft to give our students the space and knowledge. The easiest plug would be to ensure that students had access to a business or economics course and that the concept of a social business or regenerative practice was plugged into the curriculum. Oftentimes we provide business case studies or exercises without pushing students to use a social lens. Even an example as cliche as developing a coffee shop can help students understand doughnut economics. When students are asked to design within that framework it forces them to ask deeper questions. How will they source their coffee? How much will they pay and how will they treat their employees? What kind of packaging will they use? How might they reduce waste (e.g. too many to-go cups aren’t great for the environment)? Both business and economics content offer clear opportunities for how we might encourage students to push their thinking. 

We could also start creating more social impact electives. Have students design a project or business around something they care about. These elective classes could be used to facilitate passion projects or help students achieve goals. Perhaps it’s a space for a PBL project that generates impact, a way for students to get CAS hours, or complete a service-learning or capstone project. When we push students to go beyond volunteering to apply business and work skills to doing good, we’re helping to make the magic happen. It sets a foundation for young people to bring this mindset into the workplace so they can ensure their future places of employment tap into their opportunities to operate in a way that promotes the 3 Ps. 

In times of rapid change, of disruption, it’s normal to fear the unknown. We have to learn to not feed into that fear. Many people are out there working to build and design new, more hopeful, more impactful narratives.  It’s for us to embrace and to show our students how to embrace it. 

“Brown jobs (those that pollute) will disappear by 70 million in 2030 BUT 80 million green jobs will appear (ILO). Change is inevitable. It’s up to us to embrace it….”

• Generation Unlimited, Kevin Frey