Apathy & Attrition The Cycle of Decline in America’s Public Schools

Between 40-60% of educators K-12 report that students don’t seem interested in learning, a staggeringly high number that coincides with rates of bullying, absenteeism, learning loss and other measures of student success. Why our students seem so disaffected and the corresponding impact on educators are the most critical questions to answer.

Apathy is a highly corrosive force in schools, more severe than indifference or ambiguity. Apathy combines a lack of interest, concern, and enthusiasm, preventing people from making contact with themselves or others. The effects of apathy spread undetected throughout communities, causing symptoms such as declining empathy, diminished effort, and emotional divestment.

In our personal lives, apathy fuels depression, anxiety, and relationship decay. In the workplace it reduces efficiency and productivity, putting people on a path to burnout. For young people, apathy is a catalyst for disrespect, defiance, and disregard. Apathy fuels unrest that triggers blame, preventing people from taking ownership of their behavior. If you haven’t witnessed it firsthand, simply ask a teacher to describe the indignant response they get when they tell a student to put away their cell phone.

How did this virus start and why is it spreading so quickly? Consider the etiology of the condition which depending upon who you ask is either an emotional or an attitudinal issue. For some it’s a psychological phenomenon needing to be treated clinically while for others it’s a result of declining expectations or an erosion of values.

While the origin of apathy may pull from psychological, attitudinal, and value influences, the true cause is difficult to determine because of the cyclical nature of the phenomenon. If we consider a classroom where 20% of the students at the start of the year were exerting consistent effort, declining to 10% by years end, a contagion effect is now a contributing factor. ?

The resulting antipathy, arising from teachers who grow angry with students for taking away the primary source of meaning that made educating worthwhile, now exerts a reinforcing effect on student apathy. If my teacher seems annoyed or doesn’t try, why should I? The resulting cascade of student absenteeism, poor learning outcomes, faculty turnover and even school violence, get caught up in this funnel cloud with a widening debris field.

School is a microcosm of society, reflecting some of the same detachment giving rise to apathy in schools. Our crisis of enthusiasm may be remnants of a post pandemic syndrome where people are stuck in survival mode, conserving resources and unwilling or fearful to take risks promoting reward.

The ‘great resignation’ as we termed it, was an early phase of apathy born out of something seemingly constructive- a realization that time is short and we want more out of life. But this attitude gradually morphed into a toxic indifference that helped us disconnect from the awfulness going on in the world. We tuned out from the worsening political ‘debate’ infesting our media and the atrocities of death and destruction around the world. People may simply feel hopeless and helpless, stuck in the bystander effect where it’s someone else’s problem to solve.

If we want to restore educator enthusiasm then we likely need greater agency for students. This generation of young people thrive when they are detached from technology, engaged in meaningful activity. When young people experience the thrill of calculated risk taking, opening doors of mental and emotional stimulation, their dependency on immediacy is lessened. Opportunities to design learning experiences may solve two of the main challenges in education, removing the burden of curriculum design and implementation for educators and bypassing the banality of learning for a legion of students who have access to more information than any generation before them.

It's going to take a paradigm shift to introduce heutagogy or self-determined learning into our primary and secondary schools, shifting the role of the educator to more of a facilitator. As teachers help students to become more discerning about data, able to think critically and apply learning to real life issues, they may feel less burdened by time and the drain of motivating.

While we transform our system to better balance between process and outcome, we will need to improve our core resilience to tolerate this change. By improving our emotional capacity, endurance, elasticity and positivity, we inoculate ourselves against the existing threat of apathy while building fortitude for this new phase of teaching and learning.

For more information on how to improve resilience as a way to protect against student apathy and education attrition, please contact us at [email protected]