I couldn’t resist passing this on. It was a reply by James Hinton to a question I had put onto a forum. The question was – ‘What do we need to teach our children?’ James sent me Bill Gates’ ’11 things you did not, and will not, learn in school’. Some of them are a bit harsh, but they all contain a germ of truth.
Take special note of Rules 6 and 7 – and maybe print them all out and pin them on your child’s bedroom door!
Rule 1 – Life is not fair – get used to it.
Rule 2 – The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you toaccomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3 – You will NOT make $40,000 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 are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8 – Your school may have done away with winners and losers but life hasn’t. In some schools they’ve abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many goes 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.
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