Why? The Most Important Question You'll Ever Ask

There's a story I come back to a lot.

A teacher set a writing assignment: describe how you would help someone using a technology you chose. A student submitted something about using artificial intelligence to help elderly people manage their medications. The content was good, coherent, specific, thoughtful. The teacher marked it wrong and wrote in red: "This is not what I asked for."

When the student asked why it was wrong, the teacher said: "You were supposed to choose a technology that exists."

The student, thirteen years old, looked at them and said: "AI does exist."

Both of them were stuck. The teacher had assigned a task without being clear on its purpose. The student had completed a task without understanding what the teacher actually wanted. Both of them were trying to manage the gap with the tools available to them.

Both of them were in the wrong conversation.

The question under everything

Why are we doing this?

That's the question. It sounds simple. It is simple. It also almost never gets asked.

I've sat in many, many educational settings across many decades and across several countries. The proportion of times I've heard a teacher begin a lesson by clearly articulating why this matters to the learner is very small. The proportion of times I've heard a parent explain the why before introducing a new expectation is also very small. The proportion of times I've seen a curriculum document that begins with a clearly stated answer to "why does this sequence exist?" is vanishingly small.

We have built a system almost entirely on what and how. The why is assumed, or it's listed somewhere in a document that nobody reads, or it's implicit in the logic of the institution.

What purpose actually does

Purpose is Seed Skill number six in the 7 Seeds framework, paired with focus, because they're inseparable. Focus is the ability to direct attention. Purpose is what makes that direction meaningful.

Without purpose, focus is just compliance. You're holding your attention where someone told you to hold it, for as long as they need you to hold it there. It depletes. It doesn't generate anything.

With purpose, focus becomes different. You're directing your attention because you understand what it's for, because it connects to something that matters to you. That doesn't deplete. It sustains, and it generates.

Children lose focus when they lose purpose. Not because they're deficient, but because the system has given them no reason to direct their attention to this specific thing in this specific way. "Because it's on the test" is a purpose. It's a thin one, and it produces thin engagement.

The deeper the why, the more sustained the engagement. That's not a theory. That's what I've watched in child after child, classroom after classroom, family after family.

The question as a practice

For parents: before you introduce a new expectation or requirement for your child, ask yourself first. Why does this matter? Not why does it matter to the system. Why does it matter to this child's development, right now, at this age, in this context?

If you don't have a clear answer, find one before you introduce the expectation. Or be honest that you don't have one yet.

For educators: same question. If the only honest answer is "because the curriculum says so," that's worth sitting with. Not to abandon the curriculum, but to find the real why underneath it. Every subject, every skill, every task that matters has a real why underneath it. Finding it changes how you teach it.

For both: model it. Ask it out loud. Let children hear adults ask why before they act. Let them see that it's a serious question, not a child's delay tactic.

The child who learns to ask why before they do something has a skill that will serve them for life. The child who learns to do things because they're told to, without asking why, is being prepared for a world that's rapidly disappearing.