Recent talk of a lost generation of young people had me thinking- according to recent surveys young people will find it hard to secure jobs and attain happiness in the future. And yet wherever I go in the UK I am served in shops, restaurants, my hotel room is cleaned by young people who were clearly not born or brought up in this country.

I recently spoke to a young man who was cleaning hotel rooms he had an MBA and whilst he was not content to be a cleaner he felt that it gave him the opportunity of getting his foot on the next rung on the employment ladder.

Our conversation drew me to thinking about the following – particularly rule 5.

The following is an urban myth that has been circulating for some time and has recently resurfaced. It has been attributed to Bill Gates as some advice he dished out when speaking at a high school. It is also attributed to educator Charles Sykes in his book “Dumbing Down our Kids”.

Whatever or whoever it is still pretty cool …….  politically correct teaching has created a full 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 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 terms. 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.

Add to this that nearly 50% of parents who were asked called for the return of corporal punishment in schools and two-thirds of pupils want strong leadership in the classroom is it maybe time that we returned to ‘the old standards’ in education?