Living in “Garbage Time”?

• Young people are experiencing “garbage time” – feeling the game is already over before they’ve played
• Punitive approaches to student disengagement only deepen the crisis of hope
• Schools must transform into “hope-building institutions” that connect learning to meaningful futures
• Practical strategies are suggested for how to achieve this

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A recent article in the Conversation left me pondering this week. Titled Living in Garbage Time it reports on a phrase that has been buzzing on Chinese social media sites Weibo and RedNote to describe what’s happening: “garbage time”.

The term is borrowed from basketball slang, it refers to the final minutes of a game whose outcome is already decided. The best players sit out. The bench players take over. No one tries as hard because there’s less at stake.

The article goes on to say;

The term caught on last year and seems to capture a mixture of sadness and dark humour. Basically, people now seem to expect less. It’s not so much an economic crash as a slow decline of hope.

On the same day I read an article in the Guardian reporting on comments Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham who claims Whitehall has left generation of teenagers with no hope. In the article the mayor is reported as saying (emphasis mine):

“Whitehall is simply not hearing the voices of these young people who need something very different from the education system. It is clear from the BeeWell survey that too many get to the end of secondary school and feel that the system has disinvested from them. Too many are leaving without hope and a clear path for the future.”

The Crisis of Hope in Education

The “garbage time” metaphor is particularly striking because it suggests young people feel they’re entering a world where the important decisions have already been made, the major opportunities seized, and all that’s left is going through the motions. They’re left feeling that they no longer have a voice or any choice in over decisions about their personal futures ore the future of the planet they share with others. This perspective can be deeply demotivating for students.

There are a number of contributing factors at play here, beginning with a range of global issues including economic uncertainty, environmental concerns and issues around information overwhelm. 

Many young people see an increase in the use of automation and AI as threats to traditional career paths, leaving them with few, if any, career choices that they find appealing. Further, they perceive growing wealth inequality making upward mobility seem less achievable and issues around housing affordability making traditional markers of adulthood seem unattainable.

Climate anxiety and the psychological burden of inheriting seemingly insurmountable problems are also perplexing issues for our youth, with resource depletion narratives repeated in the media, suggesting diminishing opportunities into the future.

Then there’s the issue of information overload. Young people are drowning in information, with many overwhelmed by the constant exposure to global crises through social media and other news channels, exacerbated by algorithm-driven news feeds that emphasise negative events occurring around the globe.

At a more local level, life has changed and is changing for our students. Factors such as increasing single-parent households with fewer support resources; geographic mobility separating extended family support networks and work demands leaving less time for family engagement with education can contribute to feelings of insecurity and lack of security at a time when that’s important for them.

This can lead to challenges around identity and belonging for some students. But there are also other reasons students may be challenged here. This includes those in marginalized cultural groups who feel experiencing disconnection from both traditional culture and mainstream society for example.

How does this manifest in our classrooms?

Evidence of ‘garbage time’ and the loss of hope among our students can be observed across a number of areas. Behavioural indicators such as increasing absenteeism and “quiet quitting” where students are physically present but mentally disengaged are regularly reported. We must recognise that in many cases, disengagement masks a deeper hopelessness.

We may also see increased risk-taking behaviours emerge as students seek immediate gratification when long-term rewards seem uncertain or at the other end of the spectrum anxiety and perfectionism as failure feels more catastrophic in a world of perceived limited opportunities. Both of these things can lead to resistance to planning activities (tertiary applications, career exploration etc) that require believing in a meaningful future.

The impact on academic achievement is another area of concern, with the emergence among some of aWhy bother?” attitude toward subjects not seen as immediately relevant and the declining willingness to engage in challenging work that requires persistence.

The increased emphasis on well-being reflects another key area of impact, with rising rates of anxiety and depression directly linked to future uncertainty. In addition, many students are withdrawing from school community and activities.

Why Punitive Approaches Fail

It is all too easy to make judgements about these behaviours when views through the lens of our own experiences growing up – albeit in a time when the pressures were very different to what are being faced today. Think, for example, of the introduction of threats and punishments for students and their parents when school as a solution to chronic absenteeism. Such punitive measures only address the symptoms (behaviour) without engaging the underlying cause (lack of hope). These compliance-focused systems may temporarily change behaviour but fail to build intrinsic motivation which might see a more hopeful response being taken in the future.

Breaking the Cycle

We must understand this loss of hope is not the students’ problem – it is our problem. It’s not a simple case of introducing interventions to modify the behaviour of students. It requires action from everyone to address the root causes of this situation, including parents, communities and governments. We cannot rely on or even expect control-oriented approaches to work in reversing this loss of hope as they diminish the sense of agency already threatened by broader societal forces.

Breaking this cycle will require a concerted effort on the part of all parts of our education system. Schools must seek to explicitly build hope through connecting present actions to viable futures and emphasising the importance of relationships where adults genuinely believe in students’ capacity to thrive. Implementing a process of restorative practices that maintain community connections rather than isolating struggling students is an important part of how this might be achieved.

Education as Hope-Building

I believe schools have a vital role to play in all of this. As a system, we need to frame education not just as knowledge transfer but as a fundamental hope-building institution.

When functioning in this way, schools should seek to create pathways to meaningful futures that students can envision through connecting learning to real-world problems that matter for example. We must be intentional about establishing connections between the curriculum and students’ lived experiences. Most importantly, we must prioritise the development of capabilities and dispositions that prepare students for emerging opportunities and not simply for the world as it exists currently.

We should also do more to develop learner agency and self-efficacy – the belief that one can shape circumstances. We have to regard learner agency as being central to how we work with learners, for unless we do so we have little chance of succeeding as hope-building institutions.

What can you do?

The ideas that follow are suggestions for you to consider when thinking about how to take action on this issue in your school or learning context. I suggest you find some that are relevant to your context or that you feel should be a priority where you teach.

1. Redesign Teaching and Learning to Foster Learner Agency

This may involve designing curriculum around projects that address actual community challenges. When students see their work making tangible differences in their communities, it reinforces their belief that their actions matter.

You could also foster student initiative bycreating frameworks for students to propose and lead school improvement initiatives, sustainability projects, or community outreach programs with appropriate mentorship and resources.

Our current approach to measuring success are another issue here. Allowing students to co-create personalised learning plans that connect to their interests and aspirations, and then through offering multiple ways to demonstrate achievement can be effective here.

2. Connect Education to Evolving Future Opportunities

We need to be explicitly teaching adaptability, critical thinking, creative problem-solving, and emotional intelligence as core competencies. These are the things that retain value regardless of economic shifts. How could you integrate entrepreneurship education across subjects, helping students identify needs and develop solutions rather than simply preparing for existing jobs?

It is important that we provide exposure to emerging areas of study. Consider, for example, how you might partner with innovative organisations and professionals to expose students to careers and opportunities in areas such as regenerative agriculture, clean energy, AI ethics, and other emerging fields addressing global challenges.

3. Build Supportive Community Ecosystems

Consider the range of ways you can connect students with others who can provide guidance, support and encouragement in their learning. They don’t have to feel alone in this endeavour. This includes connecting them with adults of various ages who can share diverse life experiences and success stories that didn’t follow linear paths.

 You could also implement peer mentoring systems and advisory groups where students can build strong relationships and develop collective resilience, and have students identify resources, skills, and knowledge in their communities, helping them recognize the abundance of support and opportunities around them rather than focus on scarcity.

4. Reframe Success and Failure

Many of our young people see little point in the current measures of success – sometimes because of the form of the assessment, and sometimes because of how they need to conform to what is imposed instead of having an opportunity to align what is measured with the goals they are seeking to pursue.

Consider how you might replace traditional achievement metrics with portfolios documenting growth journeys, including setbacks and how they were overcome. This process enables you and the learners to explicitly teach and celebrate the learning that comes from setbacks, normalizing failure as part of innovation and growth.

Don’t forget the encouragement that can come fromregularly featuring the diverse range of past students and community members who have created meaningful lives through unconventional paths.

5. Cultivate Collective Hope Through Action

Engaging learners in meaningful, action-oriented areas of learning provides the ideal opportunity to cultivate both the capabilities required to flourish in the future, and also build hope for finding solutions to what can seem un-solvable problems.

Your solutions-based approaches should balance awareness of problems with the exploration of innovative solutions being implemented in other parts of the New Zealand and globally.

Wherever you can, create opportunities for students to work alongside adults on long-term community improvement initiatives, seeing how persistent effort leads to change. Teach historical examples of successful social movements and positive change to counter the narrative that progress is impossible.

A final thought…

Educators cannot nurture hope if they themselves are burned out. Schools must provide adequate support and sustainable workloads. School leaders have a key role here, especially in removing the roadblocks that make this sort of innovation difficult. For example, traditional timetables and assessment systems may need modification to accommodate more innovative approaches. Further, these changes must be more than superficial add-ons; they require genuine institutional commitment to a new vision of education.

By implementing these practical strategies, schools can begin to shift from institutions that unintentionally reinforce feelings of powerlessness to communities that actively cultivate agency, purpose, and hope. The goal isn’t to create artificial optimism, but to equip young people with the tools, relationships, and experiences that make hope a reasonable response to their circumstances.