In his 2016 book, Thank You for Being Late, New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman predicts that the highest paying professions in the future will be "STEMpathy" jobs—those that combine strong science and technology skills with the ability to empathize with other humans.  

Stanton E. F. Wortham

Stanton E.F. Wortham is the Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Dean of the Lynch School of Education

It's relatively clear how today's students could obtain the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) training that will prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow. What's less clear is how they will learn compassion, sacrifice, collaboration, and the empathy that Friedman emphasizes, as well as the ideals and commitments that will give their lives meaning and purpose as they proceed through their academic careers and into adulthood.  

It’s crucial that students learn subject matter knowledge and reasoning skills in both STEM and other disciplines, but measuring students' success primarily by their mastery of job-related competencies is both myopic and perilous. Schooling focused on vocational ends and content knowledge fails to attend to education's true goal: To prepare young people to adopt ways of living that incorporate values, ideas and practices that will allow them to become decent, fulfilled human beings.

Over the past decade, parents, educators, policymakers and students have expressed a hunger for this deeper vision of education. Governments in Singapore, Canada, Scotland and elsewhere have moved beyond a single-minded pursuit of subject matter mastery to advocate for students’ well-being and well-rounded flourishing. Groups such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development, ASCD, and Ashoka advocate for educating whole human beings. Prominent foundations, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the George Lucas Educational Foundation, and others, are building naturalistic, problem-based approaches to developing children emotionally, civically and interpersonally as well as cognitively. These movements all point toward a richer vision of education in which we help young people develop into whole human beings who will lead purposeful lives.

At Boston College, we draw on the university's 500-year-old Jesuit approach to education that reinforces formative education—the guided development of the whole person toward a life of meaning and purpose.  We’re working to help young adults develop not just as intellectual and civic people, but also as emotional, social, ethical, and spiritual beings. 

BC is not alone. Many religious and secular universities throughout the nation and world share this vision, but the commitment to it and its execution are challenged by societal forces that place a higher value on job-specific skills, subject matter knowledge and the quantification of educational ends.

Stanton E. F. Wortham

The Lynch School of Education and Human Development recently convened three conferences on student development entitled "The Whole Child: One Vision, Three Events," at which integrated student support, measurement and evaluation, and whole-student practice were explored by scholars, researchers, policymakers and education professionals from the U.S. and abroad. The overall goal: articulate and share a vision of education that encompasses the many dimensions of students' lives. 

As my colleague Dennis Shirley stated: "We wanted educators to think broadly about educational change and to tap their aspirations, not only for better schools, but for a better society." If schooling is to help young people develop toward lives of meaning and purpose, we need to disseminate educational practices that engage with young people as whole human beings.

The short-term objectives were achieved: to present and share scholarship, address pressing practice and research concerns, and establish national priorities based on the whole-person approach to education.

The student-formation focus of the three conferences, however, stands in stark contrast to what Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria characterized as the last surviving bipartisan cause in America today: Technical training. Politicians unite in the belief it's the only route forward that will ensure Americans will survive and flourish in an age defined exclusively by technology.

students at computers

Zakaria, cautions, however, that this singular approach "puts America on a dangerously narrow path for the future."  He notes that Jack Ma, the founder of China's Alibaba, the world’s largest e-commerce website, argued in a 2015 speech that Westerners are more innovative than the Chinese because the latter's educational system fails to "nourish a student's complete intelligence." Zakaria asserts that the U.S. overcomes its disadvantage of having a less technically trained workforce through its "creativity, critical thinking and optimistic outlook," all non-cognitive traits that spring from a person's character, which can be further developed only through a holistic approach to education.

Recent research from the London-based foundation Sutton Trust focused on social mobility, showed that 88 percent of young people, 94 percent of employers, and 97 percent of teachers in the UK believe that characteristics such as confidence and motivation to address problems, interpersonal skills to collaborate with others, and resilience to stay focused in the face of calamity are more important than academic qualifications.  Most of the teachers believed that these skills are more important than academic proficiencies to students' success. 

The British instructors' opinion stands in direct opposition to the long-held view in both the UK and the U.S. that the true purpose of education is to train the next cohort of workers by giving them content knowledge and skills.  In contrast, research in the U.S. from the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Cambridge, Mass.-based private, non-partisan economic research firm, revealed that jobs demanding a combination of strong social and cognitive skills are growing faster than those requiring just intellectual capabilities. 

How can adults help young people develop as whole human beings moving toward lives of meaning and purpose?  Subject matter content will not suffice; teaching skills or sharing knowledge—no matter how valuable—will not propel young people toward ideals and actions that comprise a worthwhile life.  We must involve young people in activities that engage them in repeated cycles of reflection and action, dialogue, discernment and service that will help guide them toward a fulfilling life.  We're cultivating thinking, feeling students who are drawn toward being better selves with a role to play in the world. 

As Friedman also noted in "Thank You for Being Late," we are the "most technologically connected generation in human history," but the "connections that matter most, and are in the shortest supply today, are the human-to-human ones." 

Education—both at the K-12 and undergraduate levels—can play a crucial role in addressing this problem, but to do so, policymakers and school leaders must abandon their exclusive focus on knowledge, skills and training for the workforce.  The goal of education must be far grander: Guiding young people toward purposeful lives, educating the whole person for lifelong growth, and challenging them to find their calling as individuals and contributors to society. 

Stanton E.F. Wortham, Ph.D., is the Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Dean of the Lynch School of Education at Boston College