The eulogies and encomiums delivered to Apple founder Steve Jobs seemed to capture some of this longing. They were celebrations of greatness and vision in a middling, small moment. At the end of a decade that saw Iraq, Katrina, and Lehman Brothers become watchwords of American weakness, they were paeans to someone who believed, with Thomas Paine, that we had it “in our power to begin the world over again.” But, perhaps most of all, in a floundering economy, they spoke to a sense that it is entrepreneurs and innovators — and not merely infrastructure spending and payroll tax cuts — that are needed to rebuild the engine of economic growth.

The facts back up this assumption. Research from the Kauffman Foundation has demonstrated that new and young companies, those under the age of five, are responsible for all net job creation over the past generation. It is the entrepreneurs who start these businesses — and not the business tycoons courted by both parties — that are the true “job creators.” But while Republicans focus on tax cuts and regulatory relief for large corporations and Democrats look to keep teachers and police officers in their jobs, it is these entrepreneurs — the next generation’s Steve Jobses — who are being overlooked.

In a recent speech promoting a jobs bill, President Obama told Congress, “Everyone here knows that small businesses are where most new jobs begin.”

Close, but not quite. In a detailed analysis, the National Bureau of Economic Research found that nearly all net job creation in America comes from start-up businesses, not small businesses per se. (Since most start-ups start small, we tend to conflate two variables — the size of a business and its age — and incorrectly assume the former was the relevant one, when in fact the latter is.

If start-up activity is the true engine of job creation in America, one thing is clear: our current educational system is acting as the brakes. Simply put, from kindergarten through undergraduate and grad school, you learn very few skills or attitudes that would ever help you start a business. Skills like sales, networking, creativity and comfort with failure.

No business in America — and therefore no job creation — happens without someone buying something. But most students learn nothing about sales in college; they are more likely to take a course on why sales (and capitalism) are evil.