America’s massive labor crisis started in the classroom, not the workplace

America has nearly 7 million unfilled jobs. Some of those positions remain open because employers can't find workers with the right technical skills. But ask business owners directly and you'll hear something different.

Too many candidates can't show up on time; struggle to take initiative or accept constructive criticism. They can’t solve problems without detailed instructions, nor can they handle an ordinary setback without falling apart.

Politicians and pundits might blame globalization, automation or data centers. They're looking in the wrong buildings.

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This crisis didn't begin in the workplace. It began in the classroom.

I spent years as a teacher and as a school administrator before I ever ran an education nonprofit. I watched this happen from the inside. Schools gradually abandoned one of their most important responsibilities: to build character.

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Too many schools stopped teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, sure. But they also stopped teaching resilience, responsibility, perseverance and initiative. The idea that a child's feelings matter more than her performance became a paramount concern in schools.

The "child-centered" classroom sounds compassionate. Who wouldn't want children to come first? But there is a real difference between putting a child first and teaching her she is the center of the universe.

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Educators like me were increasingly discouraged from giving failing grades, from delivering honest criticism or from enforcing meaningful consequences. Participation trophies replaced accomplishment. Inflated grades replaced excellence. Protecting self-esteem became more important than preparing students for adulthood.

That’s backward. A child doesn’t build confidence by being told she’s wonderful. She builds it by doing something difficult and discovering she can succeed. Take away the difficulty, and all you’ve handed her is an unearned feeling of accomplishment, which is not the same thing at all.

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Eliminating homework, lowering standards and minimizing testing might lower stress and ease disappointment, but pressure, deadlines, competition and failure are not obstacles to growth. They are often a student’s greatest teachers.

Instead, too many classrooms became paint-by-numbers exercises: Follow the rubric. Memorize the answer. Don't take risks. Wait for instructions. Too many schools have become unrealistic experiments where students rarely experience meaningful consequences until they leave the schoolhouse.

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Is it really surprising young employees expect so little from themselves? The adults around them expected so little from them for 13 years. This might help explain the rise of "quiet quitting," of constant workplace grievances and of an instinct to look for a lawyer instead of a lesson after receiving negative feedback.

Beneath all of this lies a grave misunderstanding of human nature.

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Schools try to protect children from disappointment, unfairness, conflict and adversity — as though those realities could somehow be eliminated from life.

But education should prepare students for reality, not shelter them from it.

Children should learn about responsibility instead of envy. Virtue instead of victimhood. Perseverance instead of excuses. They should learn character is built through discipline, humility and personal responsibility.

Without those lessons, students reach adulthood believing every disappointment must be someone else's fault.

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Then reality arrives all at once.

Business owners regularly describe interviewing graduates with impressive degrees but who expect executive positions before they've demonstrated executive ability. They expect flexibility before responsibility, promotion before performance and praise before productivity. These expectations come with their school diplomas — and the fancier the school, the higher the expectation.

But no matter the school, most American students have been taught how to regurgitate facts without thinking critically. This is why, when asked to solve a problem independently, too many respond: "Nobody told me I had to think about that." When given constructive criticism, they don’t ask how to improve — they ask to speak with HR.

The only reason America's workforce isn't in even worse shape is because we're still benefiting from the work ethic of previous generations — people who believe work is an obligation before it is an emotional experience.

That inheritance is running out.

Schools have devoted enormous energy to social-emotional learning, to identity-based curricula and to lessons centered on collective grievance.

When was the last time you saw a school-wide program dedicated to teaching morality? Or humility? Or courage? Or personal responsibility? Those virtues built America. And they used to define America’s workforce.

Employers are right to be frustrated, but they're aiming their frustration at the wrong target if they only blame young workers. The problem was manufactured long before these graduates ever filled out a job application.

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The battle today between personal responsibility and collective grievance didn't begin in corporate boardrooms, on social media or on factory floors. It began in the classroom.

The good news is the solution begins in the same place. Education got us into this mess. Only education can get us out.