The Lynch School has a unique
opportunity to see student formation and
academic development and professional
development as all integrated. Rather
than siloing them off, that it's an
opportunity to connect the academic
content and the learning and the
experiences in the classroom with the
person that they're going to be outside
of the classroom, and the contribution
that they're going to make. The Lynch
School has as its main purpose, preparing
individuals who are going to play
important roles in schools, and through
that, they will influence the lives of
hundreds, if not thousands of children
through their careers, and we hope that
we can help them lead their own lives of
meaning and purpose, but also convey to
their students what sort of discernment
they need to develop, so that they in
turn, can lead lives of meaning and
purpose. We really want to help young
people to flourish in multiple
dimensions, to set noble goals for
themselves, to increase social justice, to
expand the realm of human freedom, to
eliminate extreme poverty, to arrest
climate change. We should understand that
it's a much deeper process that involves
introspection, dialogue, curiosity. A
working group that we put together here
at the Lynch School has been grappling
the whole year with trying to understand
you know, how do we get our arms around
this notion of lives of meaning and
purpose, and do so in a way that has
at least some scientific rigor. Where we
are now is identifying a number of
instruments, psychological educational
instruments that capture moral reasoning,
ethical stance, critical thinking, being
able to identify certain kinds of
paradoxes, and how does one decide
between them. In my work over the last 20
years, we have sought to understand how
do adult relationships of influence, like
relationships with mentor figures, parents
and teachers, other adults in young
people's lives, how did they make a
difference in the development of a young
person? We do want children to know how
to read. We want them to be critical
thinkers. We want them to understand the
excitement of mathematics and science, all these different things. How can
they do this, and how can they also have
the skill set that allows them to engage
with and respond to the questions and
interests that their young people bring
to the classroom? It's not easy to do, but
it can be done, and I think that that has
to do with the quest for an education
and a life of meaning and of purpose.
Formation and purpose are intrinsically
tied because we have a need to fulfill a
calling in the world, you know. This is an
age-old question. Why are we on this
planet? And when we help young people, we
scaffold them to develop that vision for
themselves. Then, all the sudden, there's a
different kind of relevance and urgency
around what they're doing today and how
it's going to contribute to that
longer-term vision.
