Over the past few weeks, I’ve published two major pieces about a body of psychological research that I believe deserves much wider attention in K–12 education. One appears in the October issue of National Review, titled “There’s Too Much Doom and Gloom in the Classroom.” The other is a chapter in the book Mind the Children: How to Think About the Youth Mental Health Crisis, edited by my AEI colleagues Naomi Schaefer Riley and Sally Satel. Because these pieces are either behind a paywall or between the covers of a book, I want to bring the discussion here.
The research at the center of both is Jeremy Clifton’s work on primal world beliefs, or “primals.” I consider it among the most important and eye-opening ideas I’ve encountered in over two decades in education thought and practice—important for two reasons: First, it’s almost completely unknown in K–12. In fact, the only mention I could find in a publication for educators was a 2022 Education Week interview in which Clifton offered a quiet warning: “Don’t assume teaching young people that the world is bad will help them. Do know that how you see the world matters.”