Merit, Meaning & the Education Maze: A Candid Look at the American Educational System with Dr. Rachel Pfeifer

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 00:04

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Meaning vs. Merit. I'm your host, Dr. Maria Christina, and today I can't wait to talk with our guest, Dr. Rachel Pfeiffer, about meaning and merit in the context of meritocracy in our American educational system. Before we get started, as always, I want to invite you to take a minute to rate, review, and subscribe if you like our show. Now, without further ado, let's turn to Rachel.

I'm so excited to be here with you, partly because I can't wait to dive into this topic. We've been talking about it on and off for months. And also because Rachel is my dear friend from when we were teenagers. So I think you may know me better than.

almost anyone that's not a family member, right? And so we've talked about these topics for so long and it's nice to now have a chance to talk about it as well from both a life perspective and also an academic perspective. So join me in welcoming Rachel to our show.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 01:16

Thanks so much, it's great to be here.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 01:19

Yeah, this is going to be great. Why am I talking to Rachel about this? education, I think this is your thing, Education. You studied it a lot. You were a Morehead scholar, Morehead-Kane scholar. I got to mention the UNC bit because I know you guys are all really big fans. And in case anyone's a listener.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 01:42

Absolutely, this is true. I am here with my UNC mug right now. absolutely.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 01:47

Yes.

And then you were a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. You studied at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. You were the president of an organization Collegiate Directions, which provides college support to low income first generation to college students through graduation. Is that right? That's right.

And then you served as the executive director of college and career readiness with Baltimore city public schools and Mike drop. You taught fourth grade in the Mississippi Delta, right? To me, when I saw that and I was like, all right, she's taught fourth graders. She knows exactly what we're talking about with the educational system. Right. So I can't wait to dive into talking about education in America. Kind of not that broad, right? That's a really broad topic. ⁓

But how meritocracy fits into that

Absolutely.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 02:47

So it's great to be here. I'll just say that again. I feel like this is a continuation of our teenage years chat. And I do, my career has been in education. I will add to the things that you mentioned that I am currently the mom of two little girls, including a first grader. And so I'm navigating education on the parent side, right? Which is,

another layer of things that has definitely caused me to reflect pretty deeply on what our education system looks like and how it works and how it maybe is changing, maybe needs to change.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 03:33

That's great. I'm so glad you brought that in. So you know, it's interesting when I, I think a lot about meritocracy, as you know, and I think I've noticed many people are surprised when they hear that because in the world of clinical psychology, my expertise lies in eating disorders and OCD and anxiety. There's a lot of perfectionism there and

So it's not an obvious overlap to many people. But to me, through my lens, meritocracy is just one of the social structures that reinforces this high achievement and perfectionistic mentality. And I hear it all the time from my clients. There's this, the people that are more prone to going more extreme to

leverage the chances that they're going to be better off just in case, right? They're going to go more towards more merit, more achievement. They're going to feel that stress. And that's not to say that everybody does, but I certainly hear it. And so when you have a system that's saying, we're going to reinforce that and reward it, then it reinforces that mindset. Meritocracy is really complicated because

I say it, and I almost don't even know what to say, whether to say we have the system, the social structure, or we don't, because there's so much discussion saying meritocracy is actually a myth. There's a whole book that's titled that. And that it's really just kind of another version of aristocracy, because it's really the wealthy that are getting more of the merits and the accolades.

And so I think about that when I think of our educational system because of this in many environments, certainly not all, but in many environments, there's this high pressure to succeed or I'm just out, I'm not even gonna try, right? I see that binary, the polarization.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 05:45

Right. That's right.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 05:53

And I see the schools and the system reinforcing that. And at the same time, we can say a lot of these people are not even getting the rewards, even if the merit is there the way that their comrades are when maybe the merit is a little bit less. So we would love to hear, I would love to hear more about that from you.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 06:12

Right.

That's great topic. We could be here for days. I think that just you have identified, though, I think a reality that for a portion of students in schools, achieving the highest marks, whatever those may be, is what's driving them. for

for a variety of reasons. could be the love of the subject. It could be parental pressure. It could be this is just what the culture is, and this is what we do. Certainly, you mentioned fear of not getting ahead or not maintaining status. And I do think that that is kind of churning in different ways in different schools. And so people who

have had that kind of schooling experience tend to look for it for their kids, right? Because they feel like that's what helped them maintain their status or their access, right? I think that there's also a level of...

that is framed as meritocracy and you alluded to this, but is that we want our kids to be in schools with people like us, right? And so if this is what people like us do, then this is what we're going to do. And in the midst of that, I just want to reiterate what you said. are a group of people who are doing just fine in school, but don't have that same level of drivenness and pursuit.

of achievement, right? And so they may be doing just fine. The academic work might be coming really easily to them, but they're not kind of on that treadmill, right? And then you have people for whom the learning is challenging, right? They're not clicking with how things are being taught or what is being taught or the context of their classroom and

So they have kind of opted out or, you know, I think we talk a little bit about quiet quitters in the space of work. But I just saw someone who wrote an article recently saying that in middle school, you even start to see the quiet quitting, right? Like it can start early on with people who are just like, this is not where I want to spend my time and energy for a variety of reasons.

And just to lay the full context out, we have different types of schools here in the United States. So we have independent schools, some of which have a, they're private schools with religious affiliations, they're independent schools that are serving in a college preparatory focus kind of way. We have a public school system that also has charter schools that have a little bit more independence, but they're still public. And so you just end up with this.

a range of options for families. have people who are homeschooling at the same time. And I think all of that plays in to very different playing fields, I'll say, when young people kind of emerge into the workforce, right?

Let me just pause there and see whether there's anything you want me to dig into from what I just said.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 09:58

Yeah, I, this is more of a tangential topic maybe for another time. But I do often think about the extent to which our academic system or educational system does not seem to be serving the needs of the kids that are struggling more. Right. And I see that I see so much, you know,

kiddos that have ADHD, for example, and they may be struggling just to be sitting there in class, and we're trying to get them to fit this mold. And then, if again, if there's a system of meritocracy, and I'm not saying that there is and that it's equal and fair, but even theoretically if there is, then the merit is what's getting rewarded. And some kids just are not equipped to display that merit in the same way.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 10:32

Yeah.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 10:54

By default, that system is not serving all of the kids very well.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 10:59

Yes, I think that what you have just described is one of the biggest challenges of a public education system, right? That you have a range of students in your classroom who are there largely by organized by age, right? And during that time, there's content that they are supposed to

to learn and they're supposed to get that content and learn some skills about how to keep learning more content and then be ready for what's next. And you have students who are learning at different paces. You have some who can learn the content very quickly and be done and then potentially are bored, right?

You have others who really need every little bit of time and additional assistance, right, and how we structure that, how we provide for students special educational needs of all varieties, right, including, you know, we talk about twice exceptional students, right, students who might have

educational needs and are demonstrating giftedness or accelerated growth in a particular academic area as well, right? And so as we think through what's happening in our schools, in our classrooms, there's a lot that we are asking of our teachers and of our school system at large in being able to serve the full range of students really well.

I believe that we should. I believe that we can make progress toward it. And I think that you certainly see parents' voices getting louder, community voices getting louder when they feel like it's not being done. I will just say during COVID, I think it was a wake-up call for a lot of parents who thought certain things were happening in the classroom and then certainly watching a teacher.

to online is not an ideal situation for teacher, student, or parent, but they realized that maybe their student was missing some things or their student wasn't getting the attention they were looking for in that setting, and so that caused people to ask questions that maybe they hadn't before because they were just accepting that they were sending their kids off to school and they were going to get the education they needed.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 13:40

and now what we're seeing is this huge push for school choice. And potentially, as of the recording of this episode, the educational system moving from the federal government to the state,

How do you see what we're talking about playing into when I say what we're talking about, what I have in mind is we have a system that's merit-based, that merit is rewarded in many different ways.

Right. It's very often academic. Sometimes it's also in sports. Depending on the school, there may be art schools, music schools, right. And they're they're rewarding, excelling in those specific areas. think predominantly it's in the classroom and it's based on tests and quizzes and homework. And I'm curious what you think.

might happen to the system of meritocracy, how it may shift evolve, how you might hope it might shift or evolve as you know, if if and as changes are made, moving to the state and as people potentially have more school choice.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 14:54

Yeah, so just in thinking about the federal role in education, I will say that education still remains largely local in the US. Curriculum is often determined at the district level, the school district level. The standards are determined at the state level, even if there is a common core standards.

framework that exists nationally. Each state has kind of tweaked it to cover their own things. And so when you look at the federal role, you are looking from a funding perspective at the Title I grants, right, that are going to schools that have students whose families have financial need. You're looking at some teacher development grants that are relatively small in the grand scheme of things.

you're looking at the Pell Grants for college, and you're looking at funding for students with special educational needs. And so I think it remains to be seen exactly what happens with that. But largely, local communities and local school districts are kind of determining

much of what is happening in the day to day in their schools. And so the shifts I would love to see, right? I would love for us to reframe schools as places where you learn how to learn. And so instead of just hitting the mark,

in whatever way that might be, like you said, could be academics, could be sports, could be arts, largely it's been academics. I would love to see schools where, and we're beginning to see this develop in pockets all over the place, where students are really celebrated for their process, for their...

ownership of their learning, in addition to understanding the content. I'm not ever going to throw out the need to learn the content, to learn the skills that I think are essential for critical thinking and computation and the building blocks. But we have been lopsided, right? I think I speak for myself and say that

I do not remember good chunks of the content that I aced when I was in school. In large part because I was focused on getting the content down and not necessarily on meaningful processes of kind of taking the information and really processing it and applying it.

and integrating it into my understanding of the bigger picture, I was very narrowly focused so that I could get the score, right? And so I would love to see us move away from that. think in doing that, we reinforce that everyone can learn, even if it's at different paces, right? I think we...

reinforce that learning is a lifelong process, right? And again, none of this is in the context of saying, you know, we don't have grades anymore, right? But imagine what it would look like to have students reflect on how they learned, right? What was your process? What worked for you? Because, you know, as we as adults know in our day-to-day, we're not getting letter grades, right?

But we are responsible for learning a lot of new things very quickly in many circumstances and our ability to do that is a skill that we have had to build and either we built it while we were in a school setting kind of learning or we learned how to build it after the fact when we realized no one was necessarily giving us grades but we still had to figure out how to learn new things.

We had to learn new things relationally. We had to learn new practical things about managing money. We had to learn how to maintain your car. We're all learning. And the practice of learning, think, schools would do well to focus on. I do think that...

we are in a space just in reference to school choice where the people who have had, the people who currently have money and who have had money have had choices. And so the question is really what choices are available to the people for whom finances are a barrier.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 19:36

And can I just add, as you're talking about this, maybe you can even tell us what school choice is. Because I referenced it. I didn't even expect Absolutely. I'm not sure I even know.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 19:42

Sure.

So I think that it can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. So I think in its broadest form, school choice is a family's ability to make a decision about the educational setting in which their child will learn. We have everything, as I mentioned, from homeschooling, where parents or co-op is teaching a child or a group of children in

a home setting or in a kind of co-op type setting, we have, or virtually, I should say, because a lot of homeschooling is taking place online. We have a private school system that consists of independent, often called prep schools. We have religious private schools that, you know.

be Muslim or Jewish or Christian or Catholic specifically. And they are taking in fees, right? They have a price that people have to pay in order to send their kids there. And then we have the public school system and within the public school system there are charter schools. Differs in different states because again, education in this country

It's very local. But there are charter schools that have a little bit more freedom in how they operate. So some charter schools have a separate school board for charter schools. all charter schools have a governing board that is directing what is happening there. then depending on where you are in the country, they have different levels of accountability to either a charter school board or

a board of a school district in terms of being able to show that what they're doing is succeeding for the students they're serving. So when we talk about choice, I think of it as all of those options. so if you have money to spend on your child's education, then the private independent school options are available to you and

that's within your frame of reference for what you could choose. And the costs could be anywhere from a couple thousand dollars a year to $60,000. $60,000, yes, exactly.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 22:18

for kindergarten. Absolutely. are four.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 22:25

That's right. That's absolutely right. You can pay what you want for education and I think that What Proponents of school choice in our current kind of political climate Tend to say well, it's not fair that those families get that option while they're still

you know, they're still paying taxes that are going to public schools. What about the families who don't make as much money? They should still have that option as well, particularly if they have their child in the school where students are not succeeding academically. Now, you referenced in the introduction that educational achievement in this country is highly correlated with income. And there are schools

all over the country, districts all over the country that are showing what they can do in terms of high achievement for students coming from lower income backgrounds. So there's literally a book that says it can be done. But when we're looking at trends across the board.

you do see that schools that have higher concentrations of students living in poverty tend to have lower test scores or whatever the markers are, typically test scores, that are used for that. So the argument is we should give those families the chance to get out of that school to go somewhere else where they can get a better...

education is the frame. think

Don't wanna get too wonky in this, but there are questions about how much growth students have during a year. So you could have one of those schools where students are starting out lower, maybe they didn't have the opportunity to learn all their letters before they came to school, but they come to school and the teachers not only help them catch up to their grade level, but really help them accelerate, right? You could also have a school.

with students who have come in with a lot of academic exposure. And actually what they learn over the course of that year isn't as much as the students in the other school because they came in knowing a lot and they moved along but maybe not as much as someone else. And so those are all things to keep in mind when we're talking about whether school is good or whether school is not.

But the question is whether people should have choice to put their child where they want and whether their tax dollars should be used only for public schools or whether it should be given to them to use as they see fit. think the governing question in this is can the public school system maintain its provision of education for the range of students we discussed earlier if

money is taken out of the system and students are going to other schools. is that a trade off we're willing to make? And I think that different states are trying it. There are different policies in place. I think there are certainly more coming under the new kind of political administration. And I think we will learn a lot from seeing,

How that works, from my perspective, I think the question is always not just are students higher performing in another school, but what is the learning that's happening? And is there growth that the students are experiencing in those classrooms rather than they came in with a lot of great learning from home and a lot of great exposure from home and it's reinforced.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 26:12

Right.

I mentioned in the beginning that there is this whole debate about whether meritocracy even exists. And part of it is because the what you said that the scores are linked with income, right? And so

it is clear that there is no equality in terms of who's receiving the accolades and being acknowledged for merit. Even though the premise is there and there's a focus on merit, which is

of like a double edged sword. You kind of get the worst in some ways. And that's, think, in some ways why I was so interested in this topic a little bit as an aside, because I saw, you know, with the middle class stagnating economically and upward mobility, you know, existing anymore, especially for that middle class, I saw more and more teen clients and young adult college students

being more concerned about that and then saying, I got to go to even more extremes to achieve the merit thinking that that's going to get them somewhere, even though it's just such a small percent for whom it was actually getting them somewhere. so there was just that, the drive, that the fear was driving them more and more. So I became very interested in meritocracy as a topic. And

without getting political, it is very difficult to have this conversation without bringing in diversity.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 27:44

Yes.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 27:46

And I understand I've heard multiple things from the current administration, one being, let's stop DEI initiatives and also let's have a meritocracy.

And I'm not entirely sure, you know.

what kind of meritocracy those people have in mind when they use the word. But when I hear you talk about school choice and taking money out of the system, I can understand multiple perspectives. know, also as a parent, I think, wow, I want to be able to send my children where I think it's going to be a good fit for them. And I'd like to have the resources to do that. Right. So choice, I think in general is probably something that

humans would be prone to wanting and liking, right? And I also get worried that with choice may come a lack of diversity, which may be part of the initiative. It may be part of eliminating DEI. I just also then wonder.

Are people gonna go to school more in a bubble, specific little bubbles? And then what's that gonna do to learning, different kind of learning, not learning your ABCs one, two, three, but different kind of learning. And again, how does this focus on, like how would meritocracy play out? Is that gonna set us up for more?

equal kind of meritocracy or might it actually be another version of aristocracy in different words, which we already have to an extent, right? So is it just, you know, trading one in for the other? Is there a way to avoid the pitfalls so that we can have both more equality and also, because this is more the topic of this podcast,

not be so focused on merit, right? So it's funny, I'm not trying to knock meritocracy and I'm also not trying to prop it up and encourage it, but really to understand because there is a balance, kind of like you said, we're not gonna take grades away and we're not saying don't learn the fundamentals, but is there some sort of a middle ground, some moderation or balance that we might achieve as the system.

if the system moves in that direction.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 30:07

Great questions. I think I'll start just with what you started out with, which is the experience of the young people with whom you're working. And just want to kind of.

around some of what you were saying and specific anecdotes. So when you and I were applying to college quite a while ago now, I sent in six applications, right? And I worked very hard on those six applications. Couldn't do them on the computer. But I sent in six, right? And it is not unusual for me to hear about students sending in 20.

or 25 now. And getting rejections, right? So really feeling a little bit confused about what the state of play is because places they thought they would get in are not letting them in and places they didn't, you know, it just feels less predictable, I will say, than it did a couple of decades ago.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 30:56

I hear that too.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 31:23

I think that that, I would just caveat that and say that I think that that is happening for a certain set of students, right? And I think that there's still another group of students, right? And this is the nonprofit that I led for a bit, right? Who might be first in their families to go to college.

might be first or second generation in the country and they are just trying to learn about the system, right, and don't necessarily understand that other people are submitting 20 to 25 applications and they might be really excited with submitting one, right, maybe two, right, and that's among students who want to go to college, right.

And then there are whole set who just cannot either think through more schooling, like it's too much, they've made it, they've done their time through 12th grade, right, or those for whom finances just seem to be such a barrier that they wouldn't even consider it. They're not aware that there might be financial aid available to them. It's just off the table, right? They prefer to work in some cases, make...

money immediately and pursuing higher ed just doesn't seem like an option. and I should say students in the middle who probably are still submitting six applications, right, and they're hoping that they can go to school somewhere locally, right, their community college is an option for them, and they are not in the same,

I'll say rat race for lack of a better word, as some of the students who are feeling very pressured and submitting 20 to 25 applications and trying to get extra extracurriculars to be able to make their application look more compelling. And so I think that when you say like, do we even have a meritocracy or, you know.

will we see change in the future, it's really important to recognize that there are people having such different experiences right now. And so within that, I think that...

the group of people who are trying to jockey for the spaces in elite colleges and universities are really jockeying mostly with each other. And so I think that one of the questions will be as we think through diversity

of our universities as we think through even diversity in the public school arena is.

that we will continue to be more stratified by income. Just to name one particular area that we have seen and will see stratification because...

people with more advantages and more money are just operating in a sphere that's totally separate from like where the rest of the country is living from day to day. And so I...

I think that, let me back up and just say, I believe that there is a real richness in having community spaces like our public schools, where people come together across lines of difference to commit to this kind of community space, right?

I love going to my daughter's public school where there's such a diversity, ethnic diversity of students. And so at the bus stop this morning, I was asking how Ramadan fasting was going for some of our neighbors and talking to some other neighbors about their experiences.

coming from Thailand, just a range of different experiences that just get to chat about at the bus stop, or hearing my daughter having learned the dreidel song in music class, because it's representative of members of her school community. And so the music teacher thought it was good to teach that, just alongside

some of the Christmas carols that they may have sung. And I appreciate what that does in terms of broadening her mind to all the various people who are out there that our particular experiences in our house are not the only way to live. And that she gets to learn about that in a setting where it's among friends, right? It's among classmates, it's among people that.

she cares for and wants to get to know. That I think is the promise of our public school system in terms of building connection and building empathy in the context of teaching content and teaching skills, right? And so I think that

when we lose that or when we end up going to our separate corners, right? We absolutely have the right to do that. Like, that's kind of one of those things that this country has been built on. And whether it's a voucher system like I described before or school choice simply being, I would prefer for my child to go to school in this neighborhood and not that neighborhood in my district allows me to send them there if I can drive, right?

or whether it's the selection of a charter school that had a particular theme because you really think that that theme would be good for your child, right? We do have choices. I believe we should be compelled as a society to constantly look at the balance between the choices that we have and that we want to have and the resulting separation and

stratification of our society based on the choices that we make, right? Because if I just get to choose everything, then there will be certain people I never have to interact with. Because I just choose that I don't want to be in spaces where they are. And I think long term that weakens us as a democracy, as a country, as communities.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 37:32

Right. And it also seems hardly equal then.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 37:37

Yes.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 37:38

but it doesn't seem to promote equality.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 37:42

I think that's a really good point.

think I am less concerned about everyone necessarily getting the same thing, but certainly concerned about everyone having access to similar opportunities with the full belief that...

Anything could be open to me. Let me make that more concrete, Part of what happens in our schools, schools of any kind, right, is that they end up being sorting mechanisms. And sometimes it's very intentional and sometimes it's less intentional, but schools largely

students are largely dependent on adults to advocate for them so that they can receive certain things.

To connect it to your question about DEI, wonder sometimes what we see as the default of who should be getting different things. So if, I'll use a high school example just to make it more concrete again.

are and technical education classes, formerly known or known in some places as vocational classes, That are available in a school. And there are advanced classes, AP classes, honors classes, available in a school. And people are used to seeing white students or Asian students in the advanced classes.

Then when a white student or an Asian student says that maybe they want to take an advanced class and they want to take one of the vocational, one of the career and technical education courses, is that something that fits in our framework? Or vice versa? A Native American student, a Hispanic student, a black student says that they want to take an advanced class but they need a recommendation to get in.

s and the: 2000

who might not have been identified otherwise. And it shifted away from just using test scores to looking at students' grades, looking at students' work habits, thinking through what supports we could put around students who might have been close but not quite ready yet to be able to help them bump to that level where they could do advanced work.

I think about programs like AVID, achievement via individual determination that really creates a wraparound around students and says, you might not have seen yourself as someone who can do advanced work, but we see the potential and this is how we're going to support you in doing it. And that's available. Schools can suggest it, offer it to families, and families can decide.

to participate, that wasn't based on race. It was based on student potential as seen through a variety of measures. And so I think we have some mechanisms in place to be able to say, let's understand the young person we're working with. Let's understand their interests. Let's understand what we know they need to learn in order to be successful. And when I say successful, I mean

what do they want to achieve, What are some basic building blocks that we need to know in order to have critical thinking and again, like the skills that you need to be able to function in a democracy? And then how do we...

make sure that students get access to those things without the perception of a certain group of filling those slots. So that we're not saying, well, the picture in my head was that students who study automotive are going to look like this, or students who take AP calculus are going to look like this. And so there's

work on the adult end to eliminate bias in ourselves, as well as work with the students to help them see themselves in a range of different options.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 42:29

And just as we're saying this, I'm thinking about

the notion of

an accolade being given by an institution that has received credibility by a community is now seems to be shifting to enough viewers, enough individuals buying in and stamping that person as an authority. And certainly there are many institutions.

marketing that and throwing money to make sure that the viewers are agreeing with it or giving their stamp of approval. But it seems that the giver of the merit is shifting.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 43:06

Mm-hmm. I appreciate it. Yes.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 43:09

to the person.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 43:11

I really kind of, in some ways, just want to reject all of that. Agreeing that it's happening, right? But just really wanting, and specifically thinking about young people, right? To figure out what kind of people they want to be. And I don't think this is something they have to figure out from scratch, right? I do think that there is a value in

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 43:15

I know.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 43:36

looking at your community, looking at values that are important to you, to your community. I think we find ourselves in dangerous, frankly, place when the accolades start to replace our own assessment of who we want to be, what we think is important, and how we want to be.

And I think there's a real temptation to chase the accolades. Whether from institutions, and I do think institutions can, both of these groups can be a community of sorts, but I do think that sometimes the community is overwhelming the reflection about what do I believe is success.

I believe is important to me. What do I want to pursue have my life be about? And if we are constantly looking for proxies to tell us those things, it becomes problematic down the road. I think that's the point when you find people waking up and they're like, I don't even know why I'm doing this.

because they've been chasing after things that have become so far removed from who they are or were or want to be. And they haven't actually realized.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 45:08

I think that dovetails so nicely to a couple last things I wanted to ask you about. And I think you may have just answered it because here we're talking so much about meaning and merit and how you balance those two. I really liked what you were saying. You know, what kind of person do you want to be? And earlier in the conversation, you were talking

in schools, you wanted to emphasize how do you learn? And what I see there is more emphasis on process as opposed to outcome. And, I'll mention this very quickly with social media, but I'm thinking of it more broadly than that. I think, or I'm thinking out loud, wondering out loud,

I agree even institutions like educational institutions, if they are shifting our attention towards merit and away from who we want to be and meaning in life, I don't think that's helpful. I think one of the concerns I have with social media doing something similar is it's an algorithm that's working. That and the algorithm's not trying to enhance.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 46:20

Right. That's right.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 46:25

our meaning and figuring out who we want to be and how we learn and so forth. But it's focused on you clicking it. And so it's not, it's not set up for, ⁓ towards that those ends. So I guess that's one thing I'd love, I'd love to hear your thoughts as we wrap up about in the context of all of this, how can we balance any suggestions you have for us to balance?

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 46:33

That's right.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 46:54

meaning and other things in our lives with merit so that the merit isn't overshadowing everything else. And then perhaps even for, for young people who might be listening to this, any specific tips for them.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 47:08

I just picked up a book from my daughters at the library called Counting on Community. And it gets you from one to 10. But it also highlights what Sesame Street used to sing about the who are the people in your neighborhood. And I just think that community of real embodied in-person people ends up

serving or has the potential to serve as an antidote to a lot of the spinning that, quite frankly, people are doing in, as you noted, algorithm-influenced ways. And I think that, again, this is where having a range of people

really makes a difference. And so when I when I'm thinking of diversity here, right, I'm not just thinking about ethnic or racial diversity. I'm thinking about generational differences. I'm thinking about people coming from different income backgrounds. I'm thinking about people coming from different national or cultural backgrounds and. Interacting with someone who sees the world differently from you at least gives you a pause, right? It gives you the chance to think.

about your choices and why you're choosing to view the world the way you are and why they've chosen a different way and what's influenced their perspective. And I think that we can get to a place of meaning when, or at least reflecting on meaning when we stop to reflect on those interactions that we have with people who are different from us. Right. And I think that

chasing success in some ways doesn't require a ton of self-reflection, right? Like you see a bar, you chase after it, and you keep going. just in speaking to the young people who might be listening, I would just encourage them to pause, find some real people, maybe get outside your comfort zone, and engage.

in those offline conversations where we just truly learn more about each other and in doing so we learn more about ourselves. You can pursue meaning far more effectively when you actually are learning who you are.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 49:35

It's powerful and beautiful. Thank you so much for being with us. I learned a lot.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 49:40

much fun.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 49:44

understanding the different components and moving through them is complex. So I really appreciate your walking us through it and navigating the different veins, if you will, to it. And yeah, and helping us think of.

Dr. Rachel Pfeifer (: 50:02

Yeah, this was great conversation. Definitely.

Dr. Maria-Christina Stewart (: 50:04

Thank you, hopefully to be continued.

Maria-Christina Stewart (: 50:10

I hope you got as much out of this episode as I did. Thanks for joining us again on Meeting vs. Merit. If you liked this show, please leave a review of it, share it with your friends, and subscribe to get notified about our new episodes. And if you'd like to get in touch or have any questions you would like me to discuss on this show, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or Substack at Dr. Maria Christina.

Until next time, I encourage you to think about our two ⁓ M&Ms, meaning and merit, and see what happens when we embrace meaning first and allow merit to follow. See you next time.