You have heard it. Maybe in a classroom. Maybe from a parent. Maybe from a student who has genuinely stopped trying.
What is the point of this? When will I ever use this? Why does any of this matter?
It sounds like laziness. It sounds like disrespect. But in most cases it is neither. It is a genuine question that nobody has answered well enough.
What disengagement actually is
When a student disengages from school it is rarely because they are lazy or incapable. It is almost always because they cannot find a reason to care.
School asks a lot of young people. Show up every day. Pay attention. Do the work. Work toward a future that feels abstract and distant. And it does all of this without always making clear why any of it matters to the actual person sitting in the classroom.
The students who ask what is the point are often the ones who are paying the most attention. They have noticed the gap between what school is asking of them and any compelling reason to give it.
The purpose problem
At the core of disengagement is usually a lack of purpose. Not career goals, not marks, but a genuine sense of what matters to them and why.
Young people who know what they care about, even in the broadest sense, are far more resilient when school gets hard. They have something to anchor to. They can connect the work they are doing to something that feels real.
Young people who do not have that anchor drift. And drifting looks like disengagement.
What does not work
Telling a disengaged student to try harder does not work. Explaining that their marks will matter for university does not work for a student who cannot picture themselves at university or does not care about going.
Punishing disengagement does not address its cause. It just adds resentment to the existing disconnection.
What does work
Creating space for students to actually explore what matters to them is one of the most powerful things a school can do. Not in a vague way but specifically. What are you good at. What makes you lose track of time. What do you want your life to look like.
These are questions most students have never been given permission to sit with properly. And when they get that permission something shifts. They stop being passengers in their own education and start having a reason to show up.
The other piece is helping students connect what they are doing now to where they want to go. Not through career counselling but through genuinely practical tools. How to set a goal that means something. How to take the first step toward something you care about. How to keep going when it gets hard.
These are life skills that school often assumes students will pick up on their own. Most do not. And the ones who do not become the students sitting at the back asking what is the point.
The long term cost of not addressing it
Disengagement does not stay in school. A student who leaves school without any sense of purpose or direction carries that into their adult life. The habits of checking out, of waiting for someone else to give them a reason, follow them.
The earlier a school addresses this the better. Not by forcing enthusiasm but by giving students something real to connect to.
If you are seeing this in your school, we can help.
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