Youth & School Crisis

The American Youth Crisis and its Broken School System

American Youth Crisis

America’s youth are facing a convergence of crises:

Lack of Meaning or Purpose: 58% of young adults in the U.S. report feeling a lack of meaning in their lives (source).
Suicide: More than 20% of U.S. high school students have seriously considered suicide, and over 9% have attempted it (source).
Obesity: Nearly 1 in 5 children ages 2–19 in the U.S. are obese (19.3%), climbed from 13.9% in 1999–2000 to 21.1% (source, source, source).
Employment Challenges: 53% of young people aged 16–24 in the U.S. are employed (source).
Loneliness: Nearly 30% of Americans aged 18–34 experience feelings of loneliness daily (source, source).
Decline in Character: Among U.S. youth ages 16–39, conscientiousness fell by nearly 29%, extroversion declined by 29%, and neuroticism rose by 26% from 2016–2024 (source, source).
Screen Time & Mental Health: 50.4% of teens (12–17) use screens 4+ hours/day, and among these teens, 27.1% report anxiety and 25.9% report depression symptoms (source).
Disillusionment: 83% of U.S. young adults believe our government fails to protect their future; 57% of U.S. young adults are dissatisfied with the political system and 52% distrust institutions (source).

10 Problems with the Current School System

We believe the American Youth Crisis is largely due to the failures of the current educational system. Schools have not meaningfully evolved beyond their industrial roots, leaving children unprepared for the realities of modern life. Instead of cultivating curiosity, resilience, creativity, and purpose, the system continues to prioritize compliance, standardization, and outdated models of success. The result is a generation of students who may achieve credentials but lack clarity, health, or the skills to live meaningful, sustainable, and flourishing lives.

The ten problems below outline the deepest flaws in today’s schools. Each is interconnected, reinforcing the others and compounding into a system that leaves children unprepared for the future:

1. Industrial Roots and the “Factory Model” Legacy

Schools remain shaped by their 19th-century design as extensions of the factory system, prioritizing efficiency, obedience, and uniformity. Instead of preparing children to become entrepreneurs, creators, or changemakers, they continue to train students for commoditized roles that no longer exist.

Standardization over Individuality: Age-based classrooms, rigid schedules, and uniform curricula reflect factory design rather than human development.
Optimized for Workers, Not Creators: Schools produce compliant laborers rather than innovators, artists, or leaders.
Failure of Workforce Preparation: Even the old promise of employment readiness is broken. The conveyor-belt system of schooling and college produces credentials, not capability, with only 53% of 16–24-year-olds employed today (source).

2. Lack of Parental Educational Involvement and Alignment

Schools assume responsibility for raising children but fail to integrate the most essential environment for growth: the family. Without dependable adult relationships, children cannot develop securely.

Minimal Parental Time: Parents of elementary-aged children average only 1.45 hours per day in active caregiving (source), leaving schools expected to fill a void they cannot replace.
Importance of Secure Bonds: Research shows that strong parental and caregiver involvement is non-negotiable for healthy development and without dependable bonds, growth is disrupted (source).
Lack of Partnership with Families: Schools miss opportunities to align with families in creating safe, nurturing environments for cognitive, emotional, social, and moral development.

3. Compliance Over Curiosity, Evaluative and Uniform System

Rather than cultivating inquiry and creativity, schools condition children to comply, perform, and memorize.

Compliance Over Discovery: Students learn that their role is to accept finished knowledge, not to ask questions or explore.
Absence of Metacognition: Students are not taught how to learn, reflect, or adapt. Constant testing reinforces shallow memorization.
Uniformity Over Individuality: Age-based groupings and one-size-fits-all curricula ignore individual strengths and passions, disengaging many learners.

4. Siloed Learning, Lack of Relevance, and Ideological Bias

Education remains disconnected from life. Subjects are taught in isolation and filtered through ideology rather than grounded in real-world practice.

Abstract and Siloed: Disciplines are separated from one another and from practical relevance, leaving students unable to apply what they learn.
Unprepared for Complexity: Modern challenges demand integration of data, design, ethics, and storytelling. Schools produce fragmented capabilities instead.
Ideology Over Experience: Teaching is theory-first and ideology-heavy, conditioning students to live in preparation rather than contribution.

5. Creativity and Play Suppressed

As schools narrow their focus to testable outcomes, imagination is sacrificed. The decline in creativity has measurable consequences.

Creativity in Decline: There are steep declines of youth creativity across fluency (number of ideas), originality (novelty of ideas), and elaboration (detail in ideas) (source).
Arts and Play Sidelined: General trends of schools cutting the activities that foster innovation, expressiveness, and resilience.
No Space for Inventiveness: Unstructured exploration and creative risk-taking are replaced with rigid achievement goals.

6. Neglect of Emotional, Moral, and Spiritual Development

Children leave school unprepared to navigate their inner lives or relationships, stripped of tools for moral discernment and meaning-making.

Emotional Illiteracy: Schools fail to create safe environments or teach emotional intelligence, leaving students unable to regulate or connect.
No Moral Compass: Students are not guided in moral reasoning or responsibility, growing up without frameworks for integrity.
Avoidance of Meaning: Secular schools ignore spirituality, while religious schools indoctrinate one perspective, leaving no safe space for diverse exploration of meaning.

7. Neglect of Mental and Physical Health Education

Health is treated as peripheral rather than foundational. Students graduate without tools to care for their bodies or minds.

Ignored Mental Health Practices: Despite evidence of benefits, schools do not teach mindfulness, breathwork, or meditation.
Inadequate Health Education: U.S. students receive less than 8 hours of nutrition education annually, far below the 40–50 hours proven effective (source). Sleep hygiene is also neglected, leaving 70% of high schoolers sleep-deprived (source).
Misguided Physical Education: Focus is on competitive sports rather than long-term mobility, strength, and prevention of injury in a sedentary era.

8. The Lack of Finding Yourself

Schools fail to help children know themselves, discover their gifts, or cultivate lifelong practices of self-mastery.

No Lifelong Learning Practice: Students are not taught reflection, mastery, or continuous growth as part of their identity.
Gifts and Passions Overlooked: Students graduate with no clarity about what they love, value, or want from life.
No Training in Focus: Children are immersed in fragmented tasks, with no practice in flow states or deep concentration.

9. No Actual Experience Building Sustainable Futures

Schools leave children unprepared to design lives of financial resilience, autonomy, or impact.

No Real-World Problem Solving: Students are not engaged in entrepreneurial projects or impact initiatives that could teach them how to sustain themselves while contributing.
Lack of Financial Literacy: Children are not taught how to manage money or design lives free from debt traps, leaving them dependent on external jobs.
No Decision-Making Frameworks: Tools for managing time, energy, and life coherence are missing, leaving graduates without structures for resilient, contribution-oriented lives.

10. No Help to Cultivate Deep Relationships and Find Community

Schools leave children relationally unprepared, without the ability to build meaningful relationships or communities of belonging.

No Support for Belonging: Students are not guided to find aligned friends, mentors, or collaborators.
No Depth in Relationships: Authentic dialogue, vulnerability, and intimacy practices are not taught, leaving relationships shallow.
No Understanding of Dynamics: Children graduate without knowledge of relational models such as dependence, independence, co-dependence, and interdependence, which are essential to thriving communities.