To anyone with kids, of any age, here's some advice Bill Gates recently dished out at a high school speech about 11 things they did not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teaching has created a full generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

This is a good one!

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 thousand dollars 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, 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 are. 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 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.

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.

-- Anonymous, January 19, 2001

Answers

Now THAT's impressive! is there any wonder that the man is valued at over $60B? (I haven't checked today's prices)

Mr. Gates makes some good points, and some good examples. One of the examples is expressed by having a set of rules - have a personal philosophy that you can espouse. In my workplace I operate by what I call "Payne's Postulates." I share them with people who join my team, and explain them to my new hires. It sets a clear expectation, but also encourages and gives hope.

Some of Mr. Gates' comments are pretty incisive, but I think we all need to understand what point he is getting across. We cannot afford to let this generation bathe in a tub of lukewarm education. There are two kinds of success in the economic arena - creators, who bring fruit to ideas and breathe life into them; and movers, ala Mr. Gates, who take great ideas and grow them tremendously. Sometimes you will find both in the same place.

The balance we must strike as Christians is between being wealth centered, and the impact of wealth creation on our spiritual being. How much of our time will be given over to business and the "pursuit of happiness", vs. how much of time will be given over to prayer, ministry, and the "pursuit of joy"? The two are not always congruent; one can be joyful in the midst of a storm, sleeping on the boat while the billows are tossing high.

We should start all our endeavors from a Christ-based center, using everything else as tools to carry out the mission He charts for us. And those missions will be diverse. For some, it will be wealth creation, so that there are jobs available for others. For some, it will be wealth administration, redistributing the riches to the needy in ways He directs. For others it will be mastering knowledge, so that you may share it and diseminate it for the strengthening of others. For still others, it will be caring, comforting, embracing, interceding, healing, visiting.

His Kingdom is greater than the kingdoms of this world, for it goes beyond the silver and gold that the world seeks.

-- Anonymous, January 19, 2001

Brother Jerryl, you do express things well. Hey everybody, what he said!

-- Anonymous, January 20, 2001

Can anyone confirm that Bill Gates actually said these things? While they're kinda catchy, they don't sound like his normal speeking style, aren't the kind of thing he cares about, doesn't square with his personal history (didn't make great grades, dropped out of school to pursue business, came froma rich family and never "flipped burgers"), and I would have expected a huge PR flap about "BilL Gates attacks modern educational system" or somesuch, and I've only see this list posted in emails with no specifics. It all sounds pretty familiar, so I suspect that this is an old list, reattributed to Bill Gates.

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2001

Found it. The list sounded familiar, so I did a little digging around, and it is actually from Charles J. Sykes' J. "Dumbing Down Our Kids." I don't know if perhaps Bill Gates quoted it in his recent book (which I haven't read) but I'd be pretty surprised if he delivered this in a speech, particularly as exact quotes without attribution, since either "Bill Gates attacks modern educational system" or "Bill Gates plegarizes speech" would have gotten at least a little press coverage. It's actually fairly common for people to take positions that they support and attribute them to someone famous and start emailing it around as a "report" in order to build support for their positions.

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2001

Laird:

I don't know th esource but, what do you think about the sayings, Truth there? Is the source correct? Can it help?

Pastor Paris

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001

Of course Bill Gates plegorized those rules from Charles J. Sykes' J. "Dumbing Down Our Kids." Gates has built an empire from ripping- off other peoples' ideas. What is Windows? A rip-off of the Mac. What is Internet Explorer? A rip-off of Navigator. What is Word? A rip-off of Word Perfect. What is Excel? A rip-off of Lotus. What is Access? A rip-off of FoxPro. And the list goes on...

Yes, Microsoft has improved on many of the originals, but they NEVER have a creative product. And this encapsulates Mr. Gates personality.

Why not make rule #12 "Don't ever do your own work...it's quicker, cheaper, and easier to rip-off someone else's work."

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

What about the RULES? Can they help? pastor paris

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2001