Few.. are actually ready to absorb anything just after HS, in my experience - especially of the fois-gras goose-cramming we call educational 'efficiency'.

Maybe too, since the Billy years and the ubiquitous PHB (an invention clearly derived from Billy's example IMO, facilitated via the advent of these adding machines everywhere) - learning first-hand what the daily bizness-lie is like:

From that stark experience more might seek some other way to live (even the cloth ;-) in order to avoid becoming conditioned into human insensibility by these largely anti-social institutions -- a kid might even work towards reviving our Constitution, placing restraints upon the more destructive of these new bizness habits. (Since obviously the parents have little regard for such resurrection of those founding ideas.)

Good luck implementing. (Amish? - I hope I'd have chosen that fork over any proffered "career in bizness", with the fantasy of 20/20 hindsight. I hope I would have ;-) I escaped that choice. Sheer luck of timing.


Ashton

'Work' does not seem to me to be about those allegorical thorns. I'll put up Jos Campbell over the anonymous Puritannical authoring-committee you quote -- such as created a huge group of folks constantly engaged in judging the Worthiness of their fellows (completely missing that beam while zooming in on the mote.. yada yada) I encounter few who actually grok that (quite ancient) metaphor of the Garden - and the symbology of 'knowledge' and 'duality'. Most take it Literally. And you can't do a thing with that Literal - except suffer endless imaginations. And infect a whole new generation. as since the very first Misunderstanding.

If your 'work' is in an area you love - then it is neither thorn-filled nor demeaning. Perpetual punishment for allegorical 'crimes' is one Hell of an alternative to, follow your bliss. (And bliss has little to do with 'pleasure' - as the doggerel so often confuses). Those thorns go with the Shmoo analogy too: born pregnant Guilty! No dice on that lugubrious fantasy, here. It has led to all those wars - begun by those who can't manage metaphor for what it Is.

Besides, all past 'works' which we remember, celebrate today -- were done by folks who did what they did for love of the task (sometimes aided by their realizing that it also helped one's fellow Judges homo-saps). I believe that it is realizing this.. what it feels like to Love what your work is - that's what adults are obliged to demonstrate to their kids. Pref by example. [Rilly Hard that last, from a cubical cubicle - I wot]


Cheers, luck to the kids! They'll need a lot of that - headed lately as they are, to become cannon fodder before they can even become disillusioned first, with just bizness aggression.

Ashton