"What's the Point of School?" When Your Teenage Son Asks

The short answer: a speech won’t answer “What’s the point of school?”. Help your teenager find a reason of his own, by letting him see where different roads lead.

Dear parent,

One evening, in the middle of an argument about homework, my son asked me: “What’s the use of studying?”

I didn’t give him a speech. I took him to visit two friends of mine from childhood whose lives had gone different ways, and I let him ask them his own questions. He came home quieter, and with a reason of his own.

I am telling you this because that question will come to your house too, if it hasn’t already. And the instinct of every parent is the same: to answer it. To explain about jobs, money, the future. I want to tell you why that rarely works, and what does.

Why the speech fails

A teenager is pulling away from the child he was, to find out who he is. When we answer his big questions with our answers, we are handing him one more thing someone else decided. He will reject it, not because it is wrong, but because it isn’t his.

He doesn’t need your reason. He needs his own. Your job is not to supply it. Your job is to put him where he can find it.

Ask what is underneath

“What’s the point of school?” is sometimes a real question, and sometimes a cover for something else. Before you answer the question, find out which one it is. When school feels pointless, the reason may be:

• a subject that has become too hard, and he is lost;
• being picked on, or alone;
• being exhausted;
• or only having other people’s reasons to go.

If it is one of the first three, that is a problem to solve, not a question to answer. Talk to the school. If it is the last, he needs a reason of his own.

Help him find his reason

What worked for my son was not my words. It was seeing real lives. You can do the same in your own way:

• Introduce him to adults whose lives went in different directions: a relative, a family friend, someone with a trade, someone who studied long. Let him ask the questions.
• Let him spend a day where adults work.
• Ask him what he wants his life to look like at twenty-five, then ask, without judging: which road gets you there?

This is not about grades, and it is not about being better than anyone. Some choices leave you more options later, and you don’t always see which ones until much later. That is the most honest thing you can tell him.

And keep the door open

Don’t let one argument about homework close the subject. The question will come back. Each time, listen more than you speak.

If he has been missing school for weeks, or wants to leave home, that is beyond a talk at the kitchen table: speak to the school counsellor or a professional you trust.

With respect,

MOH. SAMY

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Next step

Before the talk. Check if it is the right moment, and get the first words to say to your teenager. Before you talk →