Preparing young people for jobs

Doug over at Borderland raises an interesting question. Actually, he only relays the question from Gerald Bracey:

Is job preparation what schools should be about?

Despite all the movements to the contrary, I really believe that schools -- K-12, at least -- are not about preparation of people for jobs. They are about the preparation of people for life. Or at least they should be. Work is only a small part of who we are as people. And young people need the opportunity to discover who they are. If schools are focused on preparing students for 21st century jobs, when do young people get to even think about who they are and what interests them?

On the other hand, we do need to make sure that young people have an ability to think and reason and that they can read and write. I think that they need to be encouraged to develop their creativity. And to me, those are job skills.