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rjens

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Just received an email with this....

BILL GATES' SPEECH TO MT. WHITNEY HIGH SCHOOL in Visalia, California.

To anyone with kids of any age, here's some advice. Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

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 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 are. 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.
 
$60,000 a year for a vice-president?

what a loser... vice-president of what, Nicaragua?
 
scuba_jenny:

True that it is a hoax. But dang it, it is some good advice for some of the kids today. I remember getting ribbons in school for doing excellent work and getting a paddling when I screwed up! I'll tell you ribbons hurt a heck of a lot less then my principals paddle.

wstein
 
all of those lessons can be taught without the superior tone and condensending
attitude.

and, btw, anybody with an ounce of brain figures that stuff out for themselves
by the time they are 20 or so.

the author says stuff like "water is wet" with an attitude like he is saying e=mc2 for
the first time.
 
H2Andy:
all of those lessons can be taught without the superior tone and condensending
attitude.

and, btw, anybody with an ounce of brain figures that stuff out for themselves
by the time they are 20 or so.

the author says stuff like "water is wet" with an attitude like he is saying e=mc2 for
the first time.

It would follow then that there are a lot of people around without an ounce of brain, because I've dealt with many people over twenty who haven't grasped half those rules yet.

Number 8 is something I just can't grasp. What are we teaching kids these days?
 
then no amount of preaching is going to teach them those things.

as to number 8, there is no doubt that our educational system is in trouble, but blaming the kids just makes no sense to me.

again, the whole thing just soudns smug to me.

it's like, duh... why don't you use your time to do something
positive instead of being so superior and arrogant?
 
I guess we just don't see the same tone. I find these days people dance around verbally, because no one wants to be blamed for anything, no one wants to admit to anything, and no one wants to take responsibility for anything. We suggest, imply, insinuate or allude, when sometime what we need to do is just say it straight out. That's what I see in this 'speech', someone making some blunt, basic points about life, with their tongue planted slightly in their cheek.

Who said anything about blaming the kids? Unfortunately, they are just learning what we teach them. This may be addressed to teens but it certainly isn't limited to them. These kind of attitudes come from somewhere.
 
by the way, i love your sig quote...

where is it from? classic
 

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