Bill Gates' address to high sch students

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Bill Gates' address to high sch students
4
Thu, 02-12-2009 - 11:13pm

Love him or hate him, he sure hits the nail on the head with this! Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a high school about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talked 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 until 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 were. 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 allowed all who want to to be on a team, no one has to try-out. 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 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.





iVillage Member
Registered: 01-17-2004
Fri, 02-13-2009 - 8:21am

I will agree that this list has good points, but Bill Gates never gave this graduation speech.

Avatar for sesamemom98
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 02-13-2009 - 8:29am

Thanks for that--I'm going to check into it @ my library!


Thanks to Kelly (mom2emsopmax) for my beautiful siggy! Photobucket
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-17-2007
Fri, 02-13-2009 - 9:09am

I just asked our librarian if we had this book.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 07-04-2004
Fri, 02-13-2009 - 9:42am
Not to get into an educational debate, but for the sake of viewing the other side you should check out Alfie Kohn's book "The Schools Our Children Deserve"

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