In his book, Bill Gates talks about how feel-good, politically-correct teachings created a full generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world. Here is a list showing what many school children and college graduates did not learn. The first answers are Bill Gate’s and the second ones are Bill Mason’s. While the second answers do not necessarily disagree with the first they are an attempt to show an alternative which, if applied, might help to improve our ‘real world.’
RULE 1 – Life is not fair; get used to it.
BM – Always act in a way that doesn’t make it more unfair.
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.
BM – Work for others’ respect and value your own self-respect.
RULE 3 – You will not make 40,000 dollars a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice president with a car phone, until you earn both.
BM – Always evaluate the person, never the material trappings.
RULE 4 – If you think your teacher is tough; wait until you get a boss. He/she doesn’t have tenure.
BM – You can still stand up for your values.
RULE 5 – Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.
BM – We all need to work; value what you do for your daily bread.
RULE 6 – If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
The opposing forces of free will and cause and effect are too complex to hand out as a dictum for anyone.
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.
BM – Know your own responsibilities so you don’t have to be lectured by others about them.
RULE 8- Our schools may have done away with winners and losers and 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.
BM – Rules for winners and losers vary in all societies. Look for the value in all you do.
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 in your own time.
BM – Try to use your time to enhance and enrich your own life not to perpetuate some system.
RULE 10- Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
BM – Everything in moderation.
RULE 11- Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
BM – See rule 2
1995