Apparently, Bill Gates gave a speech at a school, in which he recounted the following 11 things that students wouldn't learn in school. If it isn't true (I seriously doubt its veracity) it ought to be. Rule 8 caused great mirth among my colleagues...Rule 2: The world doesn't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time..
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life.. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs..
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
I love those sports leagues for kids which supposedly don't "keep score" because the birkenstock wearin', volvo drivin', granola eatin' simps who start the league think kids won't get their feelings hurt if there are no "winners and losers." Kids always know who won, even if THEY don't "keep score" -- the kids DO.
ReplyDeleteThis is great! In response to Rule 8, I heard (and I am not sure if this is true or not) that many schools have gone so far as to prohibit their teachers from grading with red pens. RED PENS! For fear that it would hurt the self-esteem of a student in high school. I think the switch was made to purple pens since purple is obviously a much more friendly color.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's not apocryphal about the red pen. Actually, green ink pens are the recommended ones these days... Luckily red is ok at my current place.
ReplyDeleteTruth compels me to say that there's nothing in it that I can't believe Bill Gates saying.
ReplyDeleteHe was pretty much that forthright when I heard him 25+ years ago.
I think every teenager should be made to read Rule 7! :)
ReplyDeleteI remember some years back when conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh had a riff on this sort of thing with "let's not hurt their widdle feelings" -- in some places the traditional game of "dodge ball" had been outlawed in school playgrounds. In case you don't play it in the UK, essentially a group of kids would form a pretty big circle and one kid would be "it" in the middle. You got to STAY it, if you could successfully dodge a kickball being thrown at you. (a kick about the size of a soccer ball, but not as hard, the girls also used to use it to play "four square") The longer you survived NOT being hit the longer you were in the circle. Whomever successfully hit you was now "it" in the middle. Many, many variations of the game, but this was the simplest.
ReplyDeleteRush said "it was a great game, because you learned "heads up" and to "get the hell out of the way" and developed "speed and reflexes." Now they are encouraging kids to grow up to be wussies who can't fend for themselves if there's a little challenge, and the parents sue because little Johnny was humiliated a classmnate hit him in the butt with a kickball. Never mind no one pointed a gun at Johnny's head to play the thing in the first place." A kick ball was about the size of a volleyball, with a bit more give to it, hollow, it could smack you, but unless it hit you full in the face, no harm no foul....and you'd have had to be a comlete utter klutz to get hit full in the face with it, in which case you shouldn't have been playing the thing in the first place.
Mac:
ReplyDeleteI liked this so much I posted it on my blog.
God bless
Mac:
ReplyDeleteAre you on facebook?
Dadwithnoisykids... Yes I am!
ReplyDeleteVery good!
ReplyDelete