Here is the rest of the post I started the other day. Why I want to punch Bill Gates in the Face (sometimes) because of the 11 Rules Your Children Have Not and Never Will Learn at School.
6. If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them. Yeah, OK, except that parents often do set their children up to have a closed mindset in which they don’t take risks because they don’t want to make mistakes. This is done unintentionally through praise, which you can read about here. Also, this seems like another rule geared at the privileged.
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 your own closet. Oy. Really? Most kids outgrow this stage (if they ever even enter it). So disrespectful.
8. Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but the world 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. School is not, and never has been like real (adult) life. Nor should it be. We’re talking about children here and children are not small adults. And I had the whole suck it up ideology. I know that I’m different that way but why don’t we try to do away with winners and losers instead of encouraging it through public education.
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. Don’t most people do that on their own time? Again, childhood. Again, employers would have more productive employees if they helped them to maximize their strengths. Seems like smart HR policy and procedure to me.
10. Television is not real life. In real life people have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs. Dude, they had jobs! Ross was a paleontologist you know, a scientist! Monica was a chef, Phoebe a massage therapist, Rachel shopped around but settled into design, Joey did OK with his combo of acting and odd jobs and Chandler had the really, really boring job in business. They were young, figuring things out, but they did have jobs. The frontal lobe is not fully developed until the mid-twenties. Rock on young people, it’s not your fault, it’s your lack of brains.
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11. Be nice to nerds, chances are you’ll end up working for one. Just be nice to everyone. It’s simple.
I think what really bothers me about this is the lack of respect for children and youth.
Thoughts?
Erin, I’ve been thinking about this, especially in terms of homeschooling and I think we need to back up a bit. My guess is that Bill Gates is aiming this towards kids close to graduating either high school or college. So we aren’t talking little ones, but young adults or at least those on the verge of adulthood.
He also didn’t say that schools necessarily should teach these things. In fact you could maybe argue that he thinks these are life lessons that can’t/won’t come from school but are still extremely valuable to learn.
I’d love to see schools change in many ways. I don’t think that they should be run as businesses. I guess the philosophical question is what do we want schools/education to prepare our kids for? I think there needs to be balance between inspiring kids to greatness and preparing them for the “real world” which includes academic skills as well as learning and coping/attitude skills so that they aren’t thrown off kilter when they realize that yeah – they may need to flip burgers for a while, and that there can be value in the lessons learned there.
I’m not sure schools (or society) has the balance right.
I do think we need to listen to those in the business community so we can figure out if we as educators and parents are handicapping our kids by not letting them learn these lessons when they have the support they need to put it in context.
As I commented yesterday, Bill Gates never said any of these things:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/schoolrules.asp
So you should probably correct your blog posts and stop talking about punching him in the face. It seems like that’d be the decent thing to do?
You know, I think Bill would do better to address his diatribe at the so-called “Helicopter Parent” phenomenon than at schools, per se. Public education is a reflection of societal mores – if we are over-coddling children, it’s because voters, legislators, parents, etc. want us to and expect us to. I have a sneaking suspicion it’s at least in part because so many professionals are putting off childbearing…everything looks more fleeting and fragile when you can see 40 in the rearview mirror, including your own children.
On the other hand, I do know many youth who emerged from school (and that includes post-secondary education) with a large sense of entitlement. But again, I think it had as much to do with their parents and their own innate dispositions as anything else.
I know I was dismayed and disappointed when I graduated in 1993 with my B.Ed. and there were no teaching jobs to be had. In order to pay the rent, I had to work for a temp agency doing reception and word processing. I absolutely felt it was beneath me. Looking back now, I gained absolutely PRICELESS computer skills that I never would have gotten had I been working as a teacher. Back then we didn’t have SmartBoards in every classroom and MacBooks for every teacher and computer labs and iPads the way we do today. I have to ask myself…if I hadn’t “paid my dues” back then, would I be as comfortable today with all the new technology I’m faced with every day in my teaching job? I mean, good heavens…we are all expected to create and maintain our own classroom websites today!
I had forgotten the rest of this list…but it all came back as soon as I read the first one.
I have to agree on the winners and losers part….sorry that’s just me. I loathe this whole notion of sports leagues where every thing is a tie. You need to learn that you will not always win and you won’t always lose.
I think his #9 post shows how old his thinking is – I wonder if he’d change this now (because I think this is an oldie and goodie). I think you should expect your workplace to work with you – i’m with you on that one.
I’m with Bill on the coffee shop though. Ross was the only one that could afford those aparments in NY. And honestly, no one has the amount of free time…but my god the memories of Monica trying out for that chef job with Jon Lovitz…has me laughing my ass of this time!
Great debatable post Erin – i love it.