Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Reading, Writing, Math and a dose of Self-Reliance!

I'm sure many of you have received the Bill Gate's 11 rules of life email. I was going to post that until I discovered the original (and better) article. As I've discussed in this venue, our goal at Altona is to create self-reliant citizens. This is a great article, I'm making my daughter read it tonight!

Some rules kids won't learn in school Text By Charles J. Sykes Printed in San Diego Union Tribune September 19, 1996

Unfortunately, there are some things that children should be learning inschool, but don't. Not all of them have to do with academics. As a modestback-to-school offering, here are some basic rules that may not have foundtheir way into the standard curriculum.
Rule No. 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it. The average teen-ager uses thephrase, "It's not fair" 8.6 times a day. You got it from your parents, whosaid it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generationever. When they started hearing it from their own kids, they realized RuleNo. 1.
Rule No. 2: The real world won't care as much about your self-esteem as muchas your school does. It'll expect you to accomplish something before youfeel good about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually, when inflatedself-esteem meets reality, kids complain it's not fair. (See Rule No. 1)
Rule No. 3: Sorry, you won't make $40,000 a year right out of high school.And you won't be a vice president or have a car phone either. You may evenhave to wear a uniform that doesn't have a Gap label.
Rule No. 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait 'til you get a boss. Hedoesn't have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he'snot going to ask you how you feel about it.
Rule No. 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grand-parentshad a different word of burger flipping. They called it opportunity. Theyweren't embarrassed making minimum wage either. They would have beenembarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.
Rule No. 6: It's not your parents' fault. If you screw up, you areresponsible. This is the flip side of "It's my life," and "You're not theboss of me," and other eloquent proclamations of your generation. When youturn 18, it's on your dime. Don't whine about it, or you'll sound like ababy boomer.
Rule No. 7: Before you were born your parents weren't as boring as they arenow. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room andlistening to you tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, beforeyou save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents'generation, try delousing the closet in your bedroom.
Rule No. 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Lifehasn't. In some schools, they'll give you as many times as you want to getthe right answer. Failing grades have been abolished and classvaledictorians scrapped, lest anyone's feelings be hurt. Effort is asimportant as results. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblanceto anything in real life. (See Rule No. 1, Rule No. 2 and Rule No. 4)
Rule No. 9: Life is not divided into semesters, and you don't get summersoff. Not even Easter break. They expect you to show up every day. For eighthours. And you don't get a new life every 10 weeks. It just goes on and on.While we're at it, very few jobs are interesting in fostering yourself-expression or helping you find yourself. Fewer still lead toself-realization. (See Rule No. 1 and Rule No. 2.)
Rule No. 10: Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Yourproblems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials.In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs.Your friends will not be as perky or pliable as Jennifer Aniston.
Rule No. 11: Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We allcould.
Rule No. 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic.Next time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in hismouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressingyourself" with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.
Rule No. 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under theimpression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse isromantic, you obviously haven't seen one of your peers at room temperaturelately.
Rule No. 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's abother, and life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful itwas to be a kid. Maybe you should start now.
You're welcome.

As Always, thanks for reading my blog!