Keeping Kids in their Place
Tuesday, December 13, 2005 at 06:59PM The ugly list called “Dumbing Down Our Kids” (or is it Keeping Kids in their Place?) attributed to Charles Sykes is making the rounds again. I detested the thing when I first saw it and it still creeps me out. Sykes’s original is in bold; my response is not.
Rule 1: Life is not fair; get used to it. Life is absolutely fair. We all get the same odds of absolutely arbitrary good and bad things happening to us.
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. The world doesn't care about anything. Only people have the capacity for caring and there are plenty of caring people in the world. We should teach people to feel good about a much wider scope of "accomplishments" than that narrowly defined by the business world: artistic talent, empathic gifts, being a good friend, being healthy, etc.
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. I know kids who come out of high school (or a year of technical college) Novell or Cisco certified that make 40K easy. Artistic, athletic, entrepreneurial, and musical talents are rewarded at an even higher rate. Age and experience are not an indicator of earning power. Talent and rare or valued skills sets are.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss who doesn't have tenure. Very funny. Have you ever seen an employee evaluation done in the private sector? They are a joke. We have a negative unemployment rate here in our area of Minnesota in many sectors of our economy. (1 applicant for every 25 manufacturing jobs.) Good bosses aren't tough. They are teachers and coaches and mentors. At least the ones who wish to keep good employees are. (And that's driving the old white, bald, cigar-chomping, I-say-jump bosses nuts!)
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger-flipping; they called it opportunity. Depends on whether it is at MacDonalds or Chez Bovine. Any work into which a person cannot bring imagination, creativity, and personal-goal setting should be automated. I hate seeing humans doing the work of machines nearly as much as I hate seeing machines trying to do the work of humans (Internet filters, telephone automated responses, etc.)
Rule 6: If you screw up, it's not your parents' fault so don't whine about your mistakes. Learn from them. You haven't seen some of the parents my students deal with. Sometimes it IS the parents' fault.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning your room, and listening to you talk how about how idealistic you are. I thought they got that way because they lost their idealism by for working for people like you, Mr. Sykes.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades, they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life. Really? Then why do I always read about the number of times people like Harlan Sanders (KFC) failed before making it big. Good schools never give up on kids. We've learned that some people take a little more time to perform at an expected level of competence, but given time, energy and motivation, everybody will eventually get the "right" answers. Schools can't afford to be social sorting devices anymore, since there aren't places for D and F kids in society anymore.
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. If you are smart and talented enough you can have as much time off as you wish. If you are not finding yourself though work, you are in the wrong job.
Rule 10: Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs. Unless you are a writer, consultant, salesperson, or work from home (or with a cell phone and laptop out of a coffee shop). I would agree that television is not real life. Real life is a whole lot better. Thank goodness.
Rule 11: Living fast and dying young is romantic-only until you see one of your peers at room temperature. But living fast IS romantic. If you aren't a little wild while you are young, you'll have to be a little wild during a middle-age crisis when it's a lot more expensive and you'll look a great deal more foolish. The longest book is not always the most interesting book.
Rule 12: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for them. Be nice to everyone. Chances are true "nerds" will be working for you. Learn what motivates them and makes them loyal and productive.
Mr. Sykes, lighten up and get a grip.
Internet denizens, stop forwarding this crap.
I’m feeling rather contrary lately. Have you noticed? Must be all this Christmas, no Holiday, no Christmas, no Holiday, no ... Whatever shopping getting to me.
Rants 
Reader Comments (4)
Interesting observation.I believe the "official" typesetting rule is that one uses two periods between sentences when using non-proportional fonts and a single space when using proporational fonts. Since my blog uses a proportional font, I've been staying with the one space rule.
This does make me wonder though if different blog readers in RSS feeds may use non-proporational fonts that may make reading difficult.
My tactic is that if I find the posting difficult to read in Bloglines, I go directly to the blog site itself. This might work for you as well.
Thanks for the comment. It made me think.
Doug
Life is filled with ups and downs. Maybe Mr. Sykes is trying to tell kids to "buck up" and get with the program. I tend to agree with him. I'm tired of seeing former students, and some of my friends adult children, wimp out and come back to live at home because life isn't treating them fairly or because they don't make enough money to live the lifestyle they want to live.
Maybe I'm the one feeling contrary?
I really appreciate your comments. All things in moderation. Thanks for taking the time to write.
I have to agree that the "everybody gets it right eventually" is pretty optimistic. But I do think we write off an awful lot of kids we shouldn't be right now. I like the goals of NCLB - I just don't like the implementation.
My question about kids moving back home - does the problem there lie with the kids or the parents???
Keep feeling contrary, Billie. I love it!
Doug