I’ve been teaching long enough to recognize when something fundamental is shifting in the classroom. Lately, that shift sounds like a single word echoing through my courses: why. Why are we doing this? Why does it matter? Why should I care? At first, it can sound like pushback, the kind of challenge that might once have been mistaken for defiance. But I don’t see it that way. When Gen Z students ask “why,” they’re not questioning authority; they’re questioning meaning. They’re trying to understand whether what they’re being asked to learn aligns with a world that already feels crowded with information, competition and contradiction.
More, here.
