Why Education Is Important

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Belonging gets students in the door, but mattering keeps them learning.

Many students succeed academically while questioning their worth and place.

Of everywhere in their lives, young people report feeling they matter least at school.

Every semester, the same thing happens. After the first class of the year at NYU, students linger behind, waiting until the room empties, and then share a quiet fear with their professor: maybe admissions made a mistake. Maybe they do not actually belong here. These are not students who are falling behind. They have worked hard, earned their place, and have the grades to prove it. And still, underneath all of that, sits a fear that they do not really matter.

That professor is Dr. Sarah Bennison, a faculty member at New York University, co-founder of the Mattering Movement, and a leading voice in mattering-centered education. And she is not alone in noticing this. Educators at every level are describing the same thing: a generation of young people who are outwardly achieving and inwardly exhausted.

The Gap Between Being Present and Feeling Safe

When Bennison surveys her students at the start of each semester, stress and anxiety come up again and again as their biggest struggles. Loneliness is close behind. What strikes her most, though, is not how many students are suffering. It is how few of them would actually reach out to someone at their school when they are. Most say they have a trusted adult in their lives. Most also say they would not go to a professor or staff member in a crisis.

This is the gap that rarely gets talked about. Students are physically present in educational........

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