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them think about the subject. The students learn the mundane tasks such as
conjugating verbs, but do so in the service of a bigger goal. Understanding how
the best classrooms operate can help managers keep their employees engaged.
The researchers’ analysis of extracurriculars also carries important lessons for
businesses. Much as students ultimately do with jobs, they choose their extracur-
riculars carefully, creating a community of people with shared goals. Those who
were in an immersive club or activity in high school likely remember the feelings
of camaraderie, excitement, stress, intense focus, and all-hours work that accom-
panied mounting a school play, putting together a yearbook, or preparing for a
Model U.N. competition. This is why students strongly identify with these ac-
tivities years later (“I’m a debate person”). And it’s why the skills they absorb
through those activities tend to stick. Companies that can engender these feel-
ings at work — or through extracurricular activities at work — will likely gain
employees’ loyalty.
There’s also the importance of apprenticeship. In a high school drama pro-
duction, the older students teach the younger ones how to build the sets, sew the
costumes, and manage the backstage crew. In the corporate world, the appren-
ticeship model is a well-established tradition, enabling skilled practitioners to
hand down their craft to junior artisans. This holds even in non-craft fields such
as software engineering, where developers learn from those more experienced
and, in turn, help younger engineers with their code.
It is unclear whether high schools will embrace the type of deeper learning
Mehta and Fine advocate. But even if students don’t arrive in the workplace with
those skills, executives can help ensure that their employees experience this type
of learning at work. +
Chana R. Schoenberger
is a business journalist based in
New York City. She has been on
staff at the Wall Street Journal,
Forbes, and Bloomberg. Her work
has appeared in publications in-
cluding Chicago Booth Review and
Stanford Social Innovation Review.