The word on the street is that “young people today do not value education”. The comparison always reaches back to another era, as if a previous generation cared more, tried harder or understood something that children today have forgotten. You hear the same familiar frustration repeated again and again. “When we were children, we cared more. What is wrong with these kids?” It hangs in the air like a judgement, but the truth is not hidden.
Nothing is wrong with the children. What is wrong is the comparison. Whenever we make these sweeping statements about the past and present, we conveniently skip over the truth that we are not living in the same world.
There is a quiet nostalgia that colours many of these conversations. It remembers a time when a young person could walk into a workplace and be given a chance, even if they had few certificates or none at all. Many adults who insist that children must value education were themselves given opportunities without many CXCs, degrees or specialised training. They were allowed to learn on the job. They were supported by systems that told them they could grow into a role. Today, young people are confronted with job descriptions that demand both a degree and years of work experience before they have even had a chance to begin. How can a student who has spent their entire life in school acquire years of experience, especially in a society where entry-level opportunities are shrinking or offered only to those who already know someone? The rules of the game have changed, yet adults continue to compare two completely different worlds as if they are the same.
We also have a tendency to assume that showing the cost of something will automatically make people value it. There is a growing belief that if we highlight how much is spent on education, young people will realise its worth. While transparency can be useful, cost does not equal value. In fact, it can go in the other direction if you are not careful. When people see how much money is being spent and compare it to the current state of classrooms, the condition of school buildings and the shortage of resources that teachers and students deal with every day, many questions become unavoidable. If all this money is being spent, why do schools still look like this? Why do teachers not have access to more tools? Why do students not have what they need? Instead of increasing appreciation, showing the cost without addressing the visible gaps may lead people to value the system less, not more. This is another reminder that value has nothing to do with money. In the context of education, value is built through trust, relevance, consistency, fairness and lived experience. People value what supports them, what respects them and what improves their lives. Price tags cannot create that.
Anyone who has ever bought an expensive washing machine that broke down in its first month understands this instinctively. No parent can force a child to value something simply by declaring its importance. People value things for reasons shaped by their own lives, their own stories and their own sense of what matters. Meaning is personal, and every person approaches it from a different point of reference.
We have to be honest. The promise that once guided education, that clear link between hard work and upward mobility, no longer holds in the way it used to. Young people see that two students can work at entirely different levels of effort and still end up in the same position. They see classmates who barely tried but secured jobs through connections. They see graduates with first-class honours send out dozens of applications without receiving a single call. They see that someone who coasted through school might end up in the same job as someone who pushed themselves every day, and sometimes both end up unable to find a job at all. When the outcome does not match the effort, many young people ask the question that adults try to ignore. What is the point of going to school?
This is not a question born from laziness. It is born from survival. Many young people watch their parents struggle. They watch older siblings or neighbours fight to make ends meet despite having done everything the system told them to do. They learn very early that passion does not always lead to opportunity because the system is often structured to steer them towards what seems profitable rather than what is meaningful. Students might be willing to work hard for what they love, but many do not feel they have the freedom or support to choose that path. The choice becomes money or uncertainty. Survival or idealism. When a young person believes they can make money faster without school, especially when school has not shown them consistent results, their decision is shaped by logic, not rebellion.
This is how some young people drift. If school feels pointless and opportunity feels scarce, disengagement grows quietly. A disengaged young person is vulnerable to groups that promise quick money or belonging. The saying that “the devil finds work for idle hands” remains painfully relevant because when a young person is disconnected from school and community, they are more likely to be pulled into activities they may never have considered if they had felt secure and supported. This is not because they lack values. It is because they lack options.
So when we speak about young people not valuing education, perhaps the issue is not value at all but trust. Young people pay attention to what feels real, relevant, energetic and connected to their future. They commit to what feels like it belongs to them. They invest in what shows a return. They want to learn, but they also want evidence that the system they are asked to respect will respect them in return. If they sense that the effort they put in may lead to the same outcome as doing very little, their hesitation is not disrespect, it is a rational response to an inconsistent reality.
We can remind them that education has worth. We can speak about the effort involved in keeping schools running. Yet none of this replaces the need for a system that proves its own relevance. We demand that young people value education yet we rarely ask what the system has done to earn that value. We tell them to trust a pathway that no longer delivers the clarity, opportunity or fairness that previous generations experienced. Value cannot be forced into someone. It has to be demonstrated.
Perhaps the real question is this: What has the system done to show young people that their effort matters and that their futures are secure? Until we face that question honestly, we will continue to misread their frustration as apathy and their disengagement as disrespect. Maybe they are not rejecting education at all. Maybe they are calling attention to a system that has not demonstrated that it values or understands their lived realities.
Dr Zhane Bridgeman-Maxwell is a science educator, researcher, writer and disruptor of outdated education systems in Barbados. Focused on redesigning learning through policy shifts, change management and pedagogical innovation, she amplifies the voices of students, teachers, and parents, while reimagining what school can and should be.
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