Deeper Learning Builds Agency

Democracy is a Living System that Depends on the Flourishing of Humans Within It

Aylon Samouha, CEO Transcend 

When Aylon Samouha from Transcend talks about what young people need to flourish, he keeps returning to a deceptively simple idea: deep engagement. Not the kind where school is "fun" and kids aren't learning, but the kind where students are obsessed with problems, putting in real mental effort, genuinely caring about what they're working on.

This matters for civic thriving because agency—the foundation of democratic participation—doesn't emerge from being told you're important. It emerges from discovering you can actually do things; and that depends on sustained engagement

To build dignity, you have to feel you have contributions to offer (or a gift to give, to borrow the words of Daniel Yudkin from the Beacon Project). This is where powerful  learning experiences become essential. When students engage with rigorous, relevant work—analyzing their community's housing crisis, researching local environmental policy, designing solutions to problems they've identified—they don't just learn content. They discover their own capacity.

This is fundamentally different from filling time or checking boxes. As Samouha notes, the 15,000 hours young people spend in school between kindergarten and twelfth grade either cultivate engagement or crush it. When students repeatedly experience school as something done to them rather than something they're actively doing, they internalize passivity. When they experience themselves as capable of understanding complex systems and influencing outcomes, they internalize agency.

The connection to civic life is direct: you can't participate meaningfully in democracy if you don't believe you have power to contribute and make choices. It's the difference between asking "How was school today?" and hearing "fine" (code for disengagement) versus watching a young person light up explaining a problem they're working to solve.

Transcend has learned that certain conditions reliably produce this kind of engagement: connection and community, relevance that links learning to students' lives and the world, genuine rigor that respects their capacity for complex thinking, and agency over their learning process. These aren’t accidental—they’re the result of design choices that reliably spark engagement.

For civic thriving, this means creating multiple on-ramps where young people can discover their gifts and contributions. Some find it through project-based learning that tackles community issues. Others through youth organizing, participatory budgeting, or partnerships with local organizations.What matters is the pattern: meaningful challenge, real contribution, recognized impact.

There’s a crucial piece that Ron Dahl's adolescent development research emphasizes: for teenagers especially, contribution must be recognized by peers , not just praised by parents or teachers. They need social proof that their gift matters, that their work is valued. They gain status from authentic work. Not tokenistic praise. 

This is why social media's distorted recognition system is so damaging—and why creating real opportunities for recognized contribution is so essential. Young people are biologically driven to earn status and respect, to find their tribe, to contribute in ways that matter. When we design schools and communities that channel this energy toward higher-rung thinking and genuine problem-solving rather than performance or compliance, we're not just improving education. We're building the foundation for democratic participation.

The North Star is deeply engaged young people who believe they have gifts to give and power to contribute. Everything else—the specific skills, the content knowledge, the civic competencies—flows from that foundation of agency built through deeper learning.