Last year, as part of my work as director of outdoor learning at Dunn School (CA), I joined a group of students on a class trip to Joshua Tree National Park. They were just finishing their first day of weeklong backpacking and rock-climbing expedition and were settling in for their first afternoon KBAR––outdoor enthusiast jargon, short for kick back and relax, which is essentially unstructured time.
In a matter of minutes, with no block schedules, bells, or electronics in sight, students were suddenly confronted with an unfamiliar void of time. To a precious few, this was a wonderful, fleeting opportunity for personal art, music, reading, or games, or a moment to sit in a circle and talk, relax and unwind, or lay in the shade in collective solitude.
But for most, it was paralyzing—an anxious state of idleness, an inactive tedium without digital distractions to fill the void—a symptom of having been able to avoid this exact condition for the majority of their lives. Yet perhaps this paralysis in the face of time is an indication of exactly the sort of education our students desperately need.
Earlier traditions of schooling understood free time differently. In ancient Greek times, the original intent of education was to teach people the arts and skills of living free. In fact, the etymological roots of our words for “school” and “scholarship” come from scholé, the Greek word for leisure, which in Greek culture was considered an ideal, the epitome of human progress. Work existed to provide leisure, not to create more work; education, accordingly, was devoted to the noble use of leisure—the end—rather than to work, the means.
As technology continues to save time and reduce labor, students are increasingly likely to inherit a world with less work and more unstructured time. If work demands less human input in the future, what, then, should education prepare students for? How can schools help them choose pursuits that matter not because they are necessary or productive, but because they are inherently worthwhile? Education, then, must do more than prepare students for employment; it must also prepare them for meaningful leisure.
How to Educate in a World with More Time
What does it say about our culture when we are unable to meaningfully occupy our free time, arguably our most prized possession? What does it say about our schools when students are taught to actively avoid it?
If technological innovation continues at its current rate, these questions will only become more urgent. Self-driving cars, virtual assistants, and checkout-free stores already promise to save time and reduce human labor. The modern worker, on average, reports one to two hours saved each day by using AI, and that’s just the time being reported.
More alarming are the reports of current and future disruptions to modern employment—particularly those professions that do not encompass hands-on work—resulting from automation, layoffs, and leaner human workforces. We are witnessing the remaking of employment, with impacts exceeding those of the Industrial Revolution, social media, and smartphones, according to the AI Futures Project’s report “AI 2027.”
While there is endless speculation on how to best educate the next generation to remain relevant in an AI-assisted workforce, there is little discussion on how to live a purposeful life when work, as we define it now, is perhaps no longer the dominant priority.
This discussion of the use of free time, historically described as leisure, is not new. The last time rapid technological innovation and automation resulted in massive job displacement—the Industrial Revolution—certain universities led the way to frame the conversation, such as the University of Chicago under Robert Maynard Hutchins’ leadership. As Benjamin Hunnicutt outlines in Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream, rather than chasing ever-changing job skills, reformers like Hutchins promoted “education for freedom,” integrating design, agriculture, art, philosophy, sport, and craft into daily life.
The Opportunity Cost of Education for Leisure
Basic, modern economics is partly to blame for the erosion of our understanding of meaning, purpose, and the value of leisure. As Matthew Crawford describes in his book Shop Class as Soulcraft, we are constantly reminded of the “opportunity cost” of education for leisure compared to education for work. Why would a doctor spend a morning learning to fix her own car, pursuing her interest in car mechanics, when she could simply pay someone else to do it? The money she would save by doing it herself is less important than the paid, professional hours she might gain, so she shouldn’t bother dabbling in these “amateur” pursuits.
Modifications to our educational system share part of the blame as well. As a result of the mass unemployment during the depths of the Great Depression, the value of an education shifted toward its utility and usefulness for modern employment needs, which would be determined solely by an economic rationalization of life. This shift removed the value of craft, curiosity, and self-sufficiency, or experiences that are satisfying and meaningful—and we have yet to get that back.
Education for Human Pursuits
The point of active, leisured pursuits is not to compete with workers, but to voluntarily apply and extend one’s mental and physical capabilities in activities that may resemble work but are freely chosen and rewarding for their own sake. Such activities cannot be automated. Because they are freely chosen, there is no incentive to make them more efficient. Pleasure is derived from the experience, not the efficiency of delivering a final product. This is less about the pursuit of happiness and more about the happiness of pursuit.
In an age of automation, schools should give students regular opportunities to practice these kinds of activities—not simply because they support “whole student” education or lifelong learning, but because they help students build lives beyond efficiency, productivity, and machine learning.
In many ways, this may mean returning to—or reinvigorating—the basics: studio art and design, performing arts and music; shop class, makerspaces, and innovation studios; school gardens and small-scale agriculture; outdoor education, athletics, and free play; rhetoric, public speaking, and debate; service learning and peer mentorship; and philosophy, religion, ethics, and the humanities.
Or, if schools already offer these subjects and skills, perhaps we need to reframe why they matter. Rather than framing music, art, and sport mainly as paths to a more productive life, schools might return to an older aim: teaching students the arts and skills of living freely, especially if work is no longer the primary place where they find purpose.
At Dunn School, we have structured parts of the outdoor program to give students true solitude: designated “solo time,” ranging from one to four hours, during which they sit in nature without input from other people—no electronics, no conversation, no external distractions.
We also invite students to participate in activities such as rock climbing and surfing. These pursuits are physically and mentally challenging; they are not economically productive, yet they are intrinsically rewarding, which is why people return to them despite their difficulty. They can also produce the “flow” state that positive psychology identifies as a key component of happiness. When introducing these activities, we frame their value in these terms, so students understand the “why” behind them. For many, that framing seems to resonate.
The Value of Free Time
Thanks to AI, students today have access to the most powerful and accessible information database our world has ever seen. Many will enter professions with the most advanced, “labor-saving” technology ever created. Yet if they struggle to fill a simple block of KBAR on an outdoor education trip, might something be missing?
If we don’t know how to use our leisure well, and if we default instead to obligation or passive digital distraction, we may be revealing our discomfort with freedom itself. So let’s ask ourselves again: What might we do—and how might we live—in a world with more time?
Learning for leisure might be a good place to start.