Researcher calls on Schools, communities to give direction to youth

A majority of young people are struggling to make the leap into adulthood, and educators, parents, and communities should make a more concerted effort to help rudderless youths find a clear direction and overarching sense of purpose, according to a new book.

In The Path to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life, Stanford University psychologist William Damon shares the first wave of findings from a study in which he and his graduate students have been surveying 1,200 young people between the ages of 12 and 26 over a period of five years.

“There have always been kids that drift,” Mr. Damon, a noted scholar on children’s moral development and contemporary child-rearing practices, said in an interview. “But I do think we have a special problem today in the numbers of kids and the kind of trouble they’re having in finding a sense of direction.”

Mr. Damon’s findings speak to a wider body of evidence showing that young people around the world are putting off marriage and parenthood until well into their 20s, longer than their parents and grandparents did. The trend has spurred some psychologists to coin the term “emerging adulthood” to describe the period from 18 to 25 as a new transitional phase between adolescence and adulthood.

The popular media also use “failure to launch” and “boomerang generation” to characterize the phenomenon and the increasing numbers of young people returning home after college, rather than charting a more independent life course.

Based on his research, Mr. Damon classifies adolescents and young adults into four categories, which he believes can be applied across the board to students in that age group.

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Implications for Education

Mr. Damon concludes from his study that schools, communities, and parents can do much to reverse the malaise that plagues many young people. In the classroom, for instance, he said teachers can show students how the skills and content they are learning are useful and share stories of how they found their own callings.

“Unfortunately, all the emphasis on high-stakes testing has squeezed out time for guidance, the time that teachers can take to impart the usefulness and meaning of the skills they teach, activities like writing for the school newspaper or joining the French club,” Mr. Damon said in an interview. “Not every kid is going to find meaning in the three Rs. We are single-mindedly focusing on test scores as if the test scores in and of themselves are some kind of important goal for education.”

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