Bill Gates' 11 Things Kids Won't Learn In School - A Rebuttal

Remember when your grandfather would begin some anecdote with "Back in my day..." followed by a lengthy rant about how his generation worked hard for everything, while kids today are nothing but a bunch of spoiled, lazy, entitled whiners who expect to have everything handed to them? Remember how, even as a kid, you knew this was bullshit?



I'm sure many of you have seen "Bill Gates' 11 Things Kids Won't Learn In School" going around, either in your email inbox or on Facebook. The astute reader will immediately suspect that something's amiss, because I'm rather certain that Mr. Gates does not regularly come off like the villain in a Charles Dickens novel. Turns out that this list the work of one Charles J. Sykes, author of works such as A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character and A Nation of Moochers: America's Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing, which ought to tell you a lot about where his political loyalties lie. Sykes himself is a member of the conservative think tank, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, as well as a talk radio host. The fact that someone had to take Sykes' words and attribute them to a more credible individual like Bill Gates' ought to clue you in that this is bullshit, and that it ultimately comes from a talk radio ought to further drive this point home, because talk radio hosts are nothing but purveyors of weapons-grade bullshit.

Here's the list in its entirety:

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a high school about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept sets 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 till 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 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 and video games are 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.

Well, let's go through them, shall we?

Rule 1: Well, this is certainly true - life is most definitely not fair. People can work themselves to the bone and never rise out of poverty, while banking executives can destroy the American economy and retire with generous pensions. People are born into countries like North Korea knowing nothing but tyranny and oppression, while others are born into countries that give their citizens a level of freedom that is unprecedented in human history.

The problem is, the rest of "Bill Gates'" rules imply that life is fair; that society will reward you justly for however much work you put in, and those who fall behind are simply lazy, entitled moochers. But this is simply not true, as anyone who's spent any length of time outside the vapidity that is talk radio can tell you. Life isn't fair, but that shouldn't be used a justification for apathy and inaction against gross inequality.

Rule 2: "That's right kids, forget about feeling good about yourself on the own terms, that's just a lie bandied about by those godless liberals. No, your self-esteem must be tied directly to the approval of others, despite the fact that studies have shown that this is a recipe for extreme distress and psychological dysfunction. So forget about your "suicidal ideation" or "crushing depression," for those are the signs of moral laxity and degeneracy."

Rule 3: "No kids, you won't make $60,000 right out of high school, nor will you get one of those TOTALLY RADICAL car phones that all the kids want these days (eh, that is what those whippersnappers are always going on about, ain't it?). No, chances are that once you graduate from high school and university you'll be left with crippling amounts of student debt and a dead-end job that doesn't pay a living wage (if you can even find a job). What's more, you can look forward to finger-wagging, condescending "rules" like these to tell you that it's all your fault for not keeping your nose to the grindstone and pulling yourself up by your own boostraps. It's not in the least bit true, of course, but we'll feed you this Horatio Alger bullshit so you won't question whether people like Bill Gates and other members of the 1% really deserves the obscene wealth they've amassed."

Rule 4: A boss is there to maximise your productivity, a teacher is there to, well, teach. The two aren't really comparable - school is not a job. Teachers play an enormous role in a child's personal development, while a boss is just a boss. Oh, but kids shouldn't expect that their boss should actually be good at his job and care about things like "morale" or "motivation," because it's not like those ever had an effect on productivity!

Rule 5: I'm pretty sure my grandparents knew the difference between "opportunity" and "the only job I can find is a dead end job that leads to nowhere and doesn't pay a living wage." And given that my grandparents lived through the Great Depression, I'm certain they would have some choice words for anyone whose response to their plight boiled down to, "Suck it up, you lazy contemptible moochers!"

Rule 6: But if I'm "whining about my mistakes" then how does that mean I'm blaming my parents?

Rule 7: So because my room is messy, screw the rainforest? Huh? What insane breed of logic is that? I don't recall as a child anyone trying to slash and burn my room for the sake of profit.

And as for parents, well, no one would argue that their job is difficult and stressful. But maybe it'd be just a little less stressful if they had things like maternity leave, publicly-funded healthcare, and a job that paid well enough that they could actually spend time with their children. But yonder lies socialism, and if there's one thing Americans can't abide, it's socialism. They probably can't even define what "socialism" means, but it must be bad, right?

Rule 8: True story: During the training period of one of my jobs, we had to take a test on WHMIS (the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System). In order to pass, you had to score at least 80% on a multiple-choice test, but here's the thing: candidates were allowed to take the test as many times as needed in order to pass, something that never happened to me during my time in school.

And "winners and losers?" Funny, nobody told me life was a contest. I'm reminded of a quote from Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs: "Fuck sides! What we need is a little solidarity here!" I think Rule 8 perfectly encapsulates the American view of life: a cold, dehumanising, dog-eat-dog, you're-on-your-own struggle to be king of the dungheap, where it's sink or swim and may the devil take the hindmost. But hey, maybe that's working out well for the Americans...or perhaps not, considering they consume around two thirds of the world's supply of antidepressants.

Rule 9: "What's that, you say? Your life is filled with nothing but unending drudgery, despair, and spiritual emptiness? You're thinking about ending it all? Well go kill yourself on your own time, thank you every much! If I walk into the restroom and find you've blown your brains out all over the wall, then that's coming out of your paycheque!"

Remember when I said that this list couldn't be written by Bill Gates, since he doesn't act like a villain in a Charles Dickens novel? Well, I think this list was written by someone who read "A Christmas Carol..." and thought it was a tragedy!

Rule 10: You know, I'd like to see Sykes speak to high schoolers and actually try to get them to follow his so-called "rules." Chances are, he'd get about a quarter of the way through before being shouted down by students who recognise his "rules" as the smug, condescending bullshit they are. Here's a word of advice, Sykes: if you want to convince anyone that your view is correct, don't start by acting like your audience is a bunch of morons who haven't figured out that television and real life are different things!

Rule 11: Yes, don't bother being nice to someone because of some pansy-ass notion that it makes you a "decent human being." No, you should only be nice to someone because somewhere down the line there might be money involved. And what's more American than that?