Rules for the Youth of America

Being part of the online world means that people will forward you things that they think are important. Most of the time, these forwarded emails are funny or give good advice. The following set of rules is attributed to Bill Gates who proposed them at a speech to a high school. Since I have lived a turbulent 61 years, 40 of those years as an educator, I feel that I can annotate and expand on these rules. So let’s begin.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Of all the rules that Mr. Gates proposes I think this is the most important for our youth to comprehend. Some how along the way as we grow up, we are given the impression that life is fair. This is ludicrous! One of my favorite quotes is the following by Edward Abbey

Life is unfair. And it’s not fair that life is unfair.

For years I made a sign of this quote and posted it on the wall of my office. If you think life is fair, you are going to be disappointed most of your life. In closing, just try to define the word “fair.”

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.

You are not born with good self-esteem. It takes years of positive and negative experiences, intelligence, and a feel for what is expected of you in life to develop good self-esteem. If you are smart you should work each day of your life to help build your self-esteem. If you do so, then no one will ever be able to take it from you.

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.

You typically will not make $60,000 out of college much less high school. College graduates know that only the best and brightest get the big salaries. For most of the poorly educated people who graduate from American universities today you should be happy to get a job paying any reasonable salary. Many of the top paying jobs are now being done by more highly educated Indians and Chinese who will do a better job and will work happily for a fraction of the salary paid in the US. You may think that this terrible to pay these people such poor wages and that they live a lower-quality life than you. You would be wrong. In India and China people can live great lives on a fraction of the salary paid to an American. This could be a topic for another of my blog entries.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Life is a cruel teacher. I do not know who originally said this but it is true. Your teacher is a poorly paid professional who wants nothing more than to educate you so that you will have a shot of living a decent knowledgeable life. Your tougher teachers are the ones who are most concerned for your welfare. They could just give you top grades and pass you on, but they attempt to better educate you by demanding more, demanding quality in your work, and demanding that you earn your grades. They get the same salary as the teachers who “give you” good grades. Your boss on the other hand has a bottom line to meet. If you do not come through and do what you are paid to do, then you are fired or your job is shipped to India so that it can be done properly.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

The quality of life that most American kids have today comes from the hard work and sacrifices of their grand parents and great grand parents who probably emigrated to the US and did whatever job they could find to feed their family so that they could work hard to achieve the American dream. Many of the youth of America do not study or know history and thus sit around playing video games and watching TV expecting that this will continue throughout life. It will not.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

We all make mistakes. Mistakes are personal. You made the mistake. Blaming someone else for you mistakes shows that you are immature and not equipped for the modern world. It is part of something bigger—self acceptance. We must accept ourselves for what we are. Many Americans cannot achieve this over a lifetime. They must alter their appearance through hair dye, face lifts, and surgical implants. Then they dress up their bodies with fancy clothing and stylish cars. But in the end, they are just themselves no matter what they do. Accept yourself for who you are and your quality of life should improve.

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.

Many twenty-first century American youth do not appear to “honor their fathers and mothers.” All parents, no matter how bad they are at child rearing, have made sacrifices to bring you into the world, have provided you with what you need, and have attempted to protect you. They spend lots of money giving you the things that they think you want. This money could be spent for their own pleasure but often they spend it on their children who tell them it is not good enough or not what they wanted. Something is sadly wrong with this.

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.

The modern American educational system is now supposed to prepare you for life and, if possible, give you an education. In the past, the educational system had one principal function—to educate students. That system is long gone. Now schools do neither as so well stated above by Mr. Gates. Schools should return to be educational systems and your family should entrusted with preparing you for life in the 21^st century.

It is time for schools to return the grading scale to C is average and is what most will accomplish by hard work. The grade B would be reserved for excellent students who go above and beyond the average. Ah, what about the A grade? It is for the best and brightest. What about the D and F grades? Well, these students should fail and be required to come up to the minimum standard of a C. If we did return to this classic grading system, then the system would have meaning. Grading systems today are totally useless. Note: that the system I propose, or a similar one, is used throughout Asia!

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.

I cannot find anything to say that would add to this rule. It is a fact.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Television is great. It is entertaining and allows us to escape from the real world. At the same time TV causes many of the ills that plague our declining society. First many people are fixtures in front of the TV just as the furniture in the TV room. Humans were not designed for a sedentary life. Hence, sedentary TV watching helps accelerate Americans to their state of obesity and poor health. If you were not watching TV, you might be active and actually participating in life. TV watching is a spectator sport. It would be better playing the sport that you watch.

Television watching time could be better spent reading. Virtually all academic disciplines go back to one’s ability to read. I bet that the students who read and do not watch TV achieve better grades and ultimately life more satisfying lives than those who do not read. When I say reading I am not referring to moving your eyes across words. I am referring to the comprehension of the words that your eyes cross.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

The nerds rule the world. As I mentioned in my last entry, all of the leaders of the Chinese government are graduate engineers. They are using their intelligence to quickly move China from third to first world status. The nerds run the research programs in all of our major business and industry. Who gave you TV, video games, wireless communications, jet planes, and drugs that cure your ills? You know the answer—thank a nerd.