Bored to Death

I was sitting on the chair lift with three kids the other day just making small talk and I asked if they liked school. All three kids in unison gave me the sour face and exclaimed, “No way."

One kid said, “School is the worst."

Poking a little further I asked, “Why is it bad?”

“It is SOOOO boring,” they all said.

As they described that they would prefer sand paper across their eyeballs to school, it got me thinking why I was so surprised at their reaction. We are in an era of so much knowledge about the human brain and how it learns. We know so much about how humans evolved to become the greatest learners of all time, and yet we put children in learning environments that lead to hate—literally hate—of school.

So why isn’t school as exciting as coming down a slope on skis? Or as captivating as our most popular video games? Why is school boring?

To understand that, we need to look at what boredom actually does to the brain.

Extensive research has shown that boredom, especially when chronic and inescapable, is not a mild annoyance—it's a serious neurological and psychological stressor. Studies link long-term boredom to depression, anxiety, and a breakdown in motivation and self-concept. Neuroscientist John Eastwood describes boredom as the "unengaged mind," a state that can feel like psychological suffocation. And when combined with chronic stress—which is rampant in modern school systems—this boredom becomes a form of low-grade trauma.

No wonder those kids on the lift used such strong language. In a very real way, they were describing something akin to psychological torture: the slow erosion of their curiosity and vitality under conditions that their brains interpret as hostile.

This is where psychologists like Angela Duckworth and Daniel Willingham often step in. They encourage students to power through, to develop grit, and to apply cognitive strategies. And there’s merit to that. But this approach can sometimes feel like it misses the point.

Neuroscientists like Robert Sapolsky have made a powerful counter-argument: that our behavior, motivation, and learning capacity are biologically and environmentally determined far more than they are a matter of willpower. You can tell a child to focus, to persevere, to try harder—but if their environment is hostile to learning and their brain is flooded with stress hormones, it’s like asking them to swim upstream in a hurricane.

This is what school-induced boredom does. It blocks the brain’s natural learning systems, suppresses curiosity, and makes engagement feel impossible. It’s not a lack of will. It’s a lack of the right environment.

Contrast this with how real human learning works: it doesn’t feel like learning. It feels like interest.

Let’s go back 50,000 years. Our dopaminergic system—the part of the brain responsible for motivation—fired up not when someone had to memorize something, but when they stumbled upon ripe fruit, or discovered a new river path, or saw signs of deer movement. The brain wasn’t motivated by obligation. It was motivated by discovery.

This is the core of curiosity: the drive to understand something more deeply because it matters to us.

So when people ask me, "Why do your kids at your school love learning?" the answer is simple:

Because we respect how the brain actually learns.

We create environments where students follow their interests, where challenge is connected to meaning, and where discovery is the reward. When kids feel safe, engaged, and free to explore, their brain kicks into gear. They aren’t "learning" in the traditional sense. They are just being human.

That’s what school could be. And that’s what we’re building.