Joseph, Graduate Student, CA

“Schools should provide facilitation…providing opportunity without spoon-feeding a prescribed path or stairway for getting to that happy point. School should make it possible to have a productive journey there, but I don’t think they should decide what the productive journey is and then enforce it.”

Joseph, or "Seph", is a graduate student studying Education Policy at Stanford University. He is interested in prisoner education and expanding opportunities to former felons. He was interviewed by his classmate and friend, Nicole.

Imagine your child (or one you care about deeply) is now in their 30s – out of school and starting into adult life.  What do you hope for them about their life?  What would make it a ‘good’ life?

Perspective, I think. Like, I could see just the typical sense of career, I'd be ok if he were a carpenter, electrician, computer science scholar at Stanford. But I can imagine both of those careers him being very very unhappy and not feeling connected with other people or a purpose. I'd want him to feel cool about what he's doing. An acknowledgement in your place in the world, that there are things greater than you, smaller than you, that you're connected with all of it. And that there's a correlation between sense of happiness and effort you put into strengthening those connections

What role do you think schooling should play in achieving that ideal good life?

There’s three main pieces of education in my opinion. There's parental upbringing, there's school, and there's lived experience. Schools should provide facilitation…providing opportunity without spoon-feeding a prescribed path or stairway for getting to that happy point. School should make it possible to have a productive journey there, but I don't think they should decide what the productive journey is and then enforce it.