Why Do So Many People Who Graduated High School Have Skills Gaps?

A gap can be the difference in a skill, knowledge, or ability an employer wants or needs and what their workforce or potential workforce offers.

When the gap is large, a company must invest heavily in upskilling the workforce or relocating to an area with a historical record of needing less training.

The following poem by Charles Osgood (1933- ), shared recently with me by someone I respect and admire, explains how some of these gaps occur from the bottom up:

Pretty Good

There once was a pretty good student
Who sat in a pretty good class
And was taught by a pretty good teacher
Who always let pretty good pass.
He wasn’t terrific at reading,
He wasn’t a whiz-bang at math,
But for him, education was leading
Straight down a pretty good path.
He didn’t find school too exciting,
But he wanted to do pretty well,
And he did have some trouble with writing
Since nobody taught him to spell.
When doing arithmetic problems,
Pretty good was regarded as fine.
5+5 needn’t always add up to be 10;
A pretty good answer was 9.
The pretty good class that he sat in
Was part of a pretty good school,
And the student was not an exception:
On the contrary, he was the rule.
The pretty good school that he went to
Was there in a pretty good town,
And nobody there seemed to…