Entry for November 09, 2006

I received the following in an email. Turns out that Bill didn't write these rules but the author of Dumbing Down Our Kids , Charles J. Sykes, did. I haven't read this book, I just know that these rules make a lot of sense. Go here to read more.

Bill Gates' Rules for Life
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 $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. He doesn't have tenure.
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. 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 has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades; 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'm a substitute teacher. It is usually obvious whether or not a teacher has control of her class when I substitute there. When I substitute for a teacher with little control, students won't be in their assigned seats, aren't afraid of the consequences from work not completed, sleep in class and throw things (paper, books, pencils and whatever else is handy). I just had 2 days in such a class and have one more to go. One young lady actually told me that I was making her do too much work. Hmm, class is almost 1 1/2 hours long, and when I did the work myself during my planning period (to see how hard and long it was) and it took barely over 1/2 hour to look up the answers and fill in the blanks and do 2 other short writing assignments I was wondering what ideas our teens have about the reasons they attend school. Then I wondered about the teacher when several of the students told me that she didn't give them tests. Do any of you remember the days that if you got in trouble at school you'd be in more trouble at home? I believe that we really need to adhere to a strict code of conduct in our schools and enforce it by establishing consequences and seeing that they are uniformly applied to all students such as if you're not doing your work then you don't pass and the teacher will talk to your parents. Work with parents as a team, not against each other. Let's get communication going and work as a team to educate our kids and prepare them for the "real world."

(Originally posted in my Yahoo 360 blog)