Underperform on a standardized school test, intervention. Spend too much time alone, intervention. Spend too much time online, intervention, admonishment. Test social boundaries and get in a fight, intervention, involve police. Can't spend all day in a poorly ventilated room, learning topics you never chose at a pace you can't control, without acting out; now you have to take pills. Skip class to try cigarettes, intervention and maybe CPS. Have you applied for college yet? You know you can't get a job without a degree. Apply yourself. Why are you falling behind? Apply yourself harder. Feel bad. You don't want to be flipping burgers do you? 4 more years without responsibilities, you'll remember them fondly.
Unless you excel academically or possibly athletically you are given nothing to be proud of. Anything else is a concession given in pity and children are made to know it. We make them feel bad for everything they don't master, but we make them keep doing it and we push them along so they're always behind. The only way to get off the merry-go-round is to drop out and flip burgers, but lately that has become a failure. A failure of talent, ambition, skill and - worst of all - character. It's no wonder that tey are risk-averse.