How to direct your growing children!Bill Gates' recent speech at Mount Whitney High School in Visalia, California is worthwhile reading for anyone. Love him or hate him, he sure hit the nail on the head with this one. To anyone with kids of any age, and to all of us who were kids once, here is some advice Mr. Gates recently dished out at a speech to the Mount Whitney Student Assembly. He talked about how feel-good, and politically correct teachings, created a generation of kids with no concept of reality, and how this method was setting them up for failure in the real world. He concluded by outlining the following 11 Rules:

Rule 1: Life is not fair ... get used to it.

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. However, the world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you start feeling good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $40,000 a year right out of high school, and 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 at McDonalds should not be 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 parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own bedroom.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with recognizing that there are winners and
losers, but life has not. In some schools they have even abolished failing grades, and they'll give you as much time as you want to get the right answer on an exam.
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. You are supposed to 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 out and find a job.

Rule 11: Be nice to NERDS. Chances are you will end up working for one.

rickheel Wrote:Rule 8: Your school may have done away with recognizing that there are winners and
losers, but life has not. In some schools they have even abolished failing grades, and they'll give you as much time as you want to get the right answer on an exam.
This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Ever hear of an operating system called Windows ™?

Not that he is wrong...but who in the world made Bill Gates an authority on parenting???

Just because he is the richest person in the world he has the ability to make speaches on parenting? :rolleyes:

Terpy Wrote:Just because he is the richest person in the world he has the ability to make speaches on parenting? :rolleyes:

Nope, it doesn't. In fact, he didn't write this. Hate to be the one to pull out the S word, but:

<a href='http://www.snopes.com/language/document/liferule.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.snopes.com/language/document/liferule.htm</a>

Who cares who wrote it, it still rings true. Take that hand which you have sticking out asking for something and use it doing something constructive.