It’s easy to poke fun at “mom and dad’s basement” and to chime in about laziness, but I think you’ve nailed it.
Education takes many forms, including the “go get a summer job” many of us heard from our parents, to the counselors that sell the idea of lifetime earning being so much higher with a college degree, to the family members who vicariously live their kids lives by sending them to expensive private schools or tolerating a party lifestyle in dorms and frats instead of insisting the first two years be spent at a local community college, while working part time.
And yes, the teachers in the classroom who fill impressionable young minds with liberal mush are part of the problem. But think about it and I bet most of us would agree it’s the family and other influences that are stronger forces leading to “educational failure”.
I believe the Minimum Wage has played a huge role in this....why hire a teenager for a job at such a high wage, when there are adults who are willing to work at that wage?
The teenager working a summer job is going the way of the Dodo Bird, so they come out of college with no work experience, whereas before, working summer jobs actually prepared them better for the real world.
There should be a lower minimum wage for people under the age of 18....ahhhh, but the Unions will never allow anything to put downward pressure on wages.