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For some time now, there has been a troubled national conversation about the skills and values of young people entering the workforce, concerns about their literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving ability, and, as well, their weaknesses in the so-called "soft" job skills: punctuality, responsibility, a sense of workmanship.

I wonder, though, if our collective anxiety is distracting us from, even blinding us to, a wide range of behaviors and values that are constructive, engaged, and laudable and, in fact, are dearly sought in our national assays of young people's lives. We don't look in the right places - which are, not infrequently, right before us.

The studies I did for The Mind at Work offer a different perspective. My observations of young people building a cabinet or repairing a faulty circuit revealed complex thought and skill. And these observations have also revealed a range of values that would offer an unexpected contribution to our national lamentation over the loss of values.

Let me offer some examples, ones drawn from high school classes in carpentry and auto mechanics - places that might not be, for some, the first places in the curriculum to look.

Nancy, along with another student, is replacing the brake pads on her sister's car. She works through the class period and into lunch. As she is finishing up, tightening wheel nuts with a pneumatic wrench, she talks about the importance of good brakes, how she is "really picky about brakes," how they can make the crucial difference in protecting both life and property.

And there is Carlos, one of a crew of students volunteering at a Habitat for Humanity site. He is assembling the frames for the walls of one of the bedrooms. Carlos begins by measuring, and then measures again. He then drives one nail and another, stopping occasionally to check with his eye or framing square the trueness of the frame. I ask Carlos about this precision. He says that when the frame is finished, "I know it's going to be straight and well done." He pauses and adds: "That's the way I am."

In addition to values related to use and function, I saw ample evidence of values that are more aligned with craft and aesthetics. Christian is completing a bookcase for his room, showing me a small flaw along the base. Under a strip of oak that both decorates and reinforces the base - in a place that no one will be able to see once the bookcase is upright - Christian points to a tiny gap in the otherwise flawless seam where strip and base join together. Next time, he notes, he'll check the seam more carefully. Now, though, he's going to fill the gap with putty and sand it. "No one can see it," he says, "but I want it to be right."

These illustrations reveal some of the very qualities whose loss we bemoan. They also generate for me some thoughts on a number of issues related to education, work, values, and opportunity.

The first has to do with our ways of seeing. The constructing and repairing events described here are, in some ways, pretty mundane, not as sensational as the usual glimpses we get of young people. To be sure, these events are part of a flow of experience that also can include isolation, peer insult, commodified romance, distorted masculinity, and both virtual and real violence. We're right to worry about this - especially since adults are ultimately responsible for more than a little of it. But young people's lives are complex and nuanced. What might come into focus if we got in close to other activities that mattered to them? If all we look for is pathology, we'll miss everyday moments of promise.

The question we should be asking is not: What has happened to our young people? Rather, we should think hard about the kind and number of opportunities we provide for them to develop and exhibit behavior and values that have personal and social benefit.

Mike Rose, The Mind at Work, Possible Lives, Lives on the Boundary, public education, American workers, books, Penguin Books