Abstract
Those who believe that education should prepare a student for a life of meaning, as well as for the workplace, will get a great deal from Robert J Nash and Jennifer JJ Jang’s Preparing Students for Life beyond College: A Meaning-Centered Vision for Holistic Teaching and Learning. At less than 200 pages, this little book is jam-packed with strategies, case studies, reflections and recommendations, all designed to facilitate students’ search for meaning in their lives.
Nash and Jang preface this book by suggesting that, for them, ‘the aim of a college education is to prepare students to learn and to live holistically both during and after their college experiences’ (vii). They follow by mourning the apparent demise of the ideal of a holistic education for all students and feel, like many of us, that our current system of higher education focuses on preparing students to earn a living, while neglecting to prepare them to develop as human beings. In an education system that appears more concerned with preparing students for an economy rather than a society, this raises the question: Is there space in a higher education curriculum for the meaning-making work outlined by Nash and Jang in this book?
The authors themselves appear to have found such a space – in a small private college in Vermont – and in this space have developed a curriculum based around eight core meaning-making questions or ‘quests’, upon which they embark with students. The first of these quests centres around the question of ‘What do I want to do with my life?’ The second explores values, morals and ethics, and raises the issue of what it means to live a ‘good life’, while the third encourages students to question the role of religion and spirituality in their lives. Nash and Jang’s meaning-making curriculum does not shy away from real-world personal issues and problems, as seen in the fourth ‘quest’, which delves into the challenge of forming and maintaining meaningful relationships. The fifth question encourages the student to ask ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What am I?’, as well as to consider the ‘where’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ associated with personal identity. The sixth core question is one that many students struggle with, particularly as their time in higher education draws to a close: ‘How can I find/create a meaningful career?’ The seventh question asks: ‘How can I answer the “call of service” to make the world a better place?’ While the wording of this particular question may induce a degree of eye-rolling in European students, at its heart this quest is all about exploring how we can engage with – and give back to – the world and community around us in a meaningful way. The eighth, and final, quest is concerned with helping students, and indeed ourselves as educators, to reflect on and develop the art of self-care.
For each of the eight ‘quests’, the authors provide a variety of questions with which to stimulate a conversation that drops below surface – ‘objective’ – discussion to the depths of meaning below. An example from the third quest on the role of spirituality asks: Why do I experience those sudden, uninvited moments when I regret the vanishing of a past I have barely lived and can only faintly recall; a present that continues to slip away from me until it, too, becomes a rueful reminder of possibilities forever lost; and a future that looms as being more ominous than hopeful (59)?
Preparing Students for Life beyond College is a wonderful little book that offers a practical course for those who seek to support, or mentor, their students as they explore the questions that underlie their existence and attempt to create a life of meaning. For those lucky enough to have the space in their curriculum, this book offers a ready-made course or module that will undoubtedly change how students make sense of their lives, as well as set them up for a life of meaning. For those for whom the term ‘holistic education’ is little more than an illusionary tale, this book is useful if only for deepening and developing personal reflections and understandings of what it is that adds meaning to our personal and professional lives. The questions posed by Nash and Jang compel us all to consider the very nature and meaning of our existence, regardless of what stage in that existence we happen to be at. This book can have a role to play in helping our students, as well as us as individuals, to decide, in the words of Irvin D Yalom (cited by Nash and Jang), ‘how to live as fully, happily, and meaningfully as possible’ (55).