“It’s a rare thing that we have oversubscribed courses in the humanities, because students are educated to choose courses in technology, engineering and mathematics, (…) but this course has been oversubscribed for a decade,” said Matthew Croasmun, director of the “Life Worth Living” program.
In a telephone interview with Lusa regarding the launch of the book “Uma Vida com Sentido”, based on the course he runs at Yale University, in the USA, the professor said that more than 700 students have already gone through the 13-week program, which is equivalent to a semester chair.
Created in 2014 by the other two authors of the book, Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, the course aimed to respond, on the one hand, to an increase in mental health problems among Higher Education students in the USA and, on the other, to “a kind of meaningless.”
“There is a kind of lack of purpose in students who, especially at our university, an elite university, have every opportunity in the world and can feel very empowered and very free, but have no idea how to choose between the different options. “, he reported.
Since then, demand for the course has been increasing among students at Yale, but also from other universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and even Hong Kong or Malaysia.
“It’s a growing movement among colleges and students. We have a network of affiliated colleges with more than 30 institutions,” said Croasmun.
Although with different formats depending on the contexts, the course aims to help students “marry the best of their intellectual energies with the deepest existential questions”.
According to Croasmun, students of all generations have faced existential questions such as the meaning of life and there are thousands of years of human history struggling with these questions.
“If you spend time listening to those voices, reflecting carefully and thinking with yourself and with a community of people who raise these same questions, you can make great progress, you can learn to articulate these questions better and have a greater sense of meaning and purpose in life”, he defended.
Citing spiritual leaders such as Jesus, Mohammed or Buddha, but also contemporary thinkers such as Robin Walt Kimmerer, James Baldwin or CSLewis, the authors present in their book, published in Portugal by Planeta, a guide with starting points, scripts and habits of reflection that they aim to help readers understand what makes life truly worth living.
Asked about the real effect of the course that serves as the basis for the book, Croasmun said that a study that compared students who took the course with a control group showed that there is “a real difference: students’ meaning in life increases in those 13 weeks.”
Even among students who took the course during the pandemic, who started in January 2020 without any idea that something difficult was going to happen and ended up immersed in a global pandemic, “the meaning of life increased significantly”.
Croasmun also reported some concrete examples of students who chose careers with social benefits because of the course, students who rediscovered their grandparents’ cultural or religious traditions and others who reported being able to better describe their vision of life to people who do not share the same vision.
“This is very important for us, especially in this very polarized country. That our students consider that they have gained more ability to articulate their values with people very different from themselves, that they are able to listen and discuss difficult issues such as religion with people who do not agree with they (…) are changes that we consider very, very significant.”
