I was asked recently why does your blog post come with an image of the two hecklers from the balcony on muppets? My answer is I don't take myself all that serious. The older I get the more I am like the heckler in the balcony dumbfounded by what I an witnessing. Which leads me to the younger generations and our workforce crisis. In the past few years, employers have struggled mightily to find a viable hard working labor pool. In one study common findings include: young people are unable to think critically, when confronted with difficult situations they quit, and they often feel entitled for little output. 

This shouldn't be confusing because education in the last few decades has focused on positive feelings and self-esteem building. This approach ignores the fact the world is hard, it will not make special accommodations, and it comes with uncertainty and suffering.  When young people enter the job market, if they're required to work at all, many are unable to cope with the realities of life. Employers often are forced to   present  more like counselors trying to get employees to function at the lowest levels. A labor market has been confronted by a workforce that is more concerned with feeling good and being rewarded for showing up. 

In the last few years, the focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic has been crowded out by child-centered compassion focus curriculum. It comes with  a corresponding reduction in problem solving, resiliency, and personal responsibility. In short, schools have abandoned the reinforcement of character building to coddling of fragile egos.  Make no mistake, parents have partnered in this atmosphere as well in many cases or remain ignorant of what is being taught. Anytime the we reduce the bar for excellence the results becomes evident. Curriculum is softened so that it feels more acceptable and less racist. Participation trophies replaced accomplishment and the striving of self-improvement. It is so upside down that students with the highest grades and proficiencies are often rejected entrance into colleges with preferences given to quotas of race and diversity.

Now think about that, do you want your airline pilot to fly not because of mastering physics, math, and problem solving, but feeling good about subpar grades and their ethnicity being rewarded? How can someone coddled during their most formative years stand a chance? The clear answer is they don't and employers are echoing this sentiment. Is it any wonder more and more young people love the call of socialism and "equality" so that they don't feel inferior or need to perform to higher standard?  

Is it not troubling that so many young employees expect so little of themselves? The "world's greatest generation" is passing away and their legacy of self fortitude, service to others, and overcoming great challenges is ending with them. Instead, schools and parents try to protect children from disappointment, unfairness, and adversity as if they can be avoided all of life. In reality, they are ensuring today's students are victims instead of a generation that became victors.

Jesus did not hide the fact that suffering is part of life and should not be avoided.  It must be embraced so that we grow not only in faith but character. Faith is a reminder that there is little "fair" in the world. Know this, Jesus cares little about our comfort and much more about our character. Only if the schools and programs for our young ones did the same. Without the life's lessons of disappointment there arises a culture of victimhood that ensures it must be someone else's fault. I struggled greatly in school, but no one let me coast, if they had I am not sure where I would be now, probably blaming someone else. 

Instead of puffing up young people we should be building into them that true confidence that only comes in Christ. Everything else is hollow offerings of the world that leave people dejected, without hope, and focusing on the wrong's found throughout life. Christ makes us victors and not victims, our world needs Jesus.