The cracks in our civic foundation are showing. Every time disruption rains down, the water rises and we scramble to patch leaks with new programs or interventions. Until we repair what lies beneath, the flood will keep coming.

At the foundation of any thriving democracy, beneath the policies, tests, and technologies, are three essential beams: purpose, belonging, and agency. These are not soft ideals. They are the structural supports of both learning and civic life. When young people (and the people they rely on) lose connection to them, our collective capacity to flourish weakens.

When I talk with people about how youth are engaging with systems and tools, whether it’s AI, school attendance, or college and work pathways, the pattern of our responses always reminds me of the same image.

Imagine an adult watching a small child eating dirt. Concerned, they take the child to the doctor. The doctor explains the child isn’t being reckless, somehow, their body knew it was missing something. The dirt was supplying minerals the child needed. Once those nutrients were provided, the child stopped eating the dirt. Their relationship to it changed completely: dirt became something to play in, not something to consume.

That story mirrors the ways we respond to young people and change. We often see behavior we don’t understand (how they’re using AI, disengagement from school, or rethinking college) and immediately debate what to do with the dirt. One side says, “Get rid of it.” The other says, “Give them more.” And rarely do we stop to ask the more important question: why are they eating dirt in the first place?

We react to the behavior instead of the need. Young people (and adults) are turning to AI for companionship, creativity, or belonging not because they love the technology itself, but because it’s meeting needs our human systems no longer satisfy. The question isn’t whether to take the dirt away or add more of it. It’s what deficiency is being revealed, and how we can nourish the underlying need.

This isn’t just about AI. It’s about how our education systems have mistaken the tools for the purpose. Tests and credentials were designed to guide learning, not replace it. Test should be mirrors, not finish lines. When reflection becomes performance and measurement becomes meaning, we lose sight of why we’re learning in the first place.

AI isn’t creating disconnection, it’s amplifying it, exposing where purpose, belonging, and agency have gone underfed. The question before us is whether our learning systems can meet the human needs that make any tool or technology meaningful at all.

At my previous organization, Ednium: The Alumni Collective, our work with Denver graduates revealed how easily purpose gets lost. After two school shootings, we resisted the impulse to react and instead sat with students and recent alumni to ask what they thought might prevent future violence. Their response was striking: “We don’t know why we’re here.”

They weren’t questioning safety plans or counseling support, they named a lack of connection between what they were learning and the lives they hoped to build.

That same disconnection shows up among the adults who serve youth. Teachers, nonprofit leaders, and administrators enter the work to empower young people but spend their days navigating compliance. It’s often not too much work that burns them out; it’s work misaligned with their sense of purpose. The same systems that make students feel unseen make adults feel replaceable.

That experience became the seed for my current work at Purpose Commons, where we’re building the science and practice of cultivating purpose across the systems that shape young people’s lives.

Research confirms what experience reveals: people with a strong sense of purpose live longer, experience better mental and physical health, form stronger relationships, and are more civically engaged and altruistic (Hill et al., 2016; Burrow & Hill, 2020; Damon, 2008). Purpose helps people persist through challenge and orient their lives toward qualities every democracy depends on and outcomes our systems claim to want to achieve for the youth they serve.

In our national design research at Purpose Commons, young people and youth-serving professionals described the same conditions that allow purpose to grow: belonging, exposure, and agency to act (Purpose Commons Design Research Report, 2025).

The structures of our current education ecosystem are limiting our cultural capacity to thrive amid difference because they have misinterpreted the real goal of education. Instead of cultivating people who can live, learn, and lead together in a pluralistic democracy, our systems reward compliance over curiosity. This misalignment narrows our shared imagination about what learning, community, and democracy can be.

If the cracks in our civic foundation are widening, it’s because the beams beneath it, purpose, belonging, and agency have grown weak. And in that way, we are all like the child eating dirt. Our bodies and spirits know something vital is missing. We crave connection, meaning, and the ability to shape our world, when our systems fail to offer those things, we turn elsewhere. When the beams are restored, we no longer mistake the dirt for nourishment; we can play, create, and thrive together, regardless of the tools before us.

In a flourishing learning ecosystem, these pillars are intentionally cultivated across every setting young people grow. Youth and adults co-design learning experiences tied to real community challenges. AI tools serve as mirrors for reflection and iteration. Learning happens anywhere purpose can be practiced.

A system designed this way would do more than prepare young people for work; it would prepare them for pluralism. Because they’ve experienced belonging across differences, they develop skills to engage with others. Because they’ve had exposure to new ideas and communities, they build curiosity instead of fear. And because they’ve practiced agency by making choices, and shaping change they learn what it takes to participate in democracy rather than retreat from it.

The work ahead will be to shift our collective mindset from output to outcome, from product to purpose. Purpose, belonging, and agency are not luxuries to add once we’ve achieved success; they are the foundation of success. If we rebuild from there, we can weather whatever storms the Age of AI (or any other major change) brings by learning with meaning, connecting with care, and imagining a shared future worth building together.