Kids, Character, and Workforce Economics
There is no better workforce investment than my wife. She is an elementary school counselor at a small, rural, Title I school in South Carolina. She sits in small chairs with her kids. She teaches them to treat each other with respect and kindness. She teaches them to express themselves with confidence and behave with manners. She teaches them to communicate and share. She helps them not lash out from anger and impulsiveness. She gives them pride in themselves. She changes their lives. I see it. They beam at her with all the love they have. They are little oak trees, and she tends them and guides them while they are fragile and small, so they can each grow to be strong on their own.
How much money is being spent to address the soft-skills crisis in the US right now? How many billions of dollars? How many employers report that workers struggle with communication, teamwork, adaptability, conflict management, and self-regulation? Our work with adults is triage. We must invest in the future of our workforce, of our population. This means investing in social and emotional education, especially early childhood and elementary education. If we want adults who can work well with others, manage and regulate themselves, show up, problem-solve, and collaborate, then we must start where those skills actually develop.
A study in the American Journal of Public Health found that a child’s social-emotional skills in kindergarten predicted their likelihood of graduating high school, getting a job, avoiding criminal charges, and achieving economic stability decades later. Nobel Prize winner James Heckman spent years studying the economic returns of early childhood and early non-cognitive skill development. His work consistently showed 7:1 to 13:1 returns for interventions that strengthen social-emotional and self-regulation skills in young children.
Put simply: the most cost-effective workforce development dollar is the one spent on the social and emotional development of our children. It’s not about teaching a kid a trade. It’s about teaching a child to grow successfully into a functioning adult. Such an adult can pursue education and learn skills effectively.
As a state, we must garner the political will to make this investment in our future. Unfortunately, poverty is on the rise, and children growing up in poverty experience chronic stress, instability, and fewer structured social environments, all of which impair the development of self-regulation and prosocial behavior.
At the same time, our elementary schools are not only stretched thin, but in some cases under attack or at least constant confrontational surveillance by an increasingly distrusting public.
National data shows:
- teacher shortages
- growing student behavioral challenges
- reduced recess and unstructured social interaction
- high student-to-counselor ratios or no counselor at all
- pressure for focus on testing
- antagonistic relationships with parents stoked by national politics and media
The economic cost of this professional minimizing, denigration, and defunding is enormous. According to Gallup, the turnover costs at American companies driven heavily by interpersonal dysfunction, weak teamwork, and poor communication exceed $240 billion annually. Additionally, employers then further invest in
- conflict resolution training
- communication workshops
- leadership development
- team-building programs
- coaching
Here is the real headline:
Elementary school counselor brings highest value in workforce development space
Elementary school professionals (counselors and teachers) teach social-emotional learning, emotional regulation, conflict resolution, perspective building, and cooperation. These are the ingredients of a functional person. These professionals are building the interpersonal infrastructure that companies will rely on twenty years from now. They are improving future communication skills, reducing future turnover, strengthening teamwork, and increasing employability.
We need to invest upstream. Who is currently building functional behavior in our workforce population? The answer: Early childhood and elementary school professionals. This is where we need to invest. We already have the infrastructure and the captive population of students. We already have the rigorous science and proven practices. We already have ample curriculum and methodology. We already have the professionals in the field and the pipeline to produce more of them.
Investment in our elementary counselors will save our communities millions of dollars, our states billions of dollars, and our nation trillions of dollars. These trained, experienced, passionate professionals are already at work. Yet they are minimized financially and professionally. They are underfunded. They are demonized and undercut. They are treated less and less professionally. And then we bitch from our million-dollar board rooms that the world is going to hell in a hand basket and that we just can’t find good people anymore.
We must treat early social-emotional development as economic infrastructure, or 25 years from now the situation will be way worse. We should invest in early education now. That’s planting oak trees. That’s investing in the future of our workforce.