Most good things in life are the result of hard work. 

The best things in life are the result of hard work that feels like play!

Clifford says teaching these kinds of hard skills is vital, for boys and girls. Not only do they graduate knowing how to use a table saw and welder, but Baeten says the work fosters creativity and resilience.

Those tools are sometimes dismissed as "soft skills" by educators pushing a greater emphasis on hard academics. But Baeten says those kinds of skills, including empathy, are central to the school's mission. "The real important part about being a man is taking accountability for your actions, living your life really fully in a really present way and loving people fully."

Pretty  much any problem can be solved if you are willing to embrace BOTH empathy AND accountability. Most people, at best, sacrifice one for the other.

Accountability means assigning real grades, but how do you teach empathy?

Sharing suffering, joyfully.

Is that why we suffer? To learn empathy?

Well, without suffering, we would have very little to empathize about. :-)

Suffering also teaches us that the world is illusion, and that we are not God.

Suffering also teaches us that pain does not last forever -- it only seems that way at the time.