Struwwelpeter: 11 rules for the youth how not to become a failure
Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity
IF I may say so, living in the Cape is most pleasant. Potholes are fixed, play parks for kids are being built and everything works.
Even the banks of the little stream behind my house gets a regular cut.Reading Helen Zille’s “State of the Province” speech the other day (thanks Balt) I realised why. Here are some key points from the DA’s programme for the next five years:
Continue with existing programmes to:
Manage municipalities
Spend on infrastructure
Making broadband available to all
Promoting entrepreneurship
Removing red tape
Boosting tourism (GPP rose 15% in past 5 years)
Improving present job-creating aquaculture farms (fish and perlemoen)
Boosting agriculture exports (past 5 years grew from 960M to 6,4Bn)
Developing skills and school education (especially maths and science)
Health
Housing
All these promises are based on things already achieved in the past 10 years.
Number one, are you listening?
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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 set them up for failure in the real world.
Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!
Rule 2 : The world doesn’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 parents’ 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.
If you can read this – thank a teacher.
If you can read this in English – thank a soldier!
* * *
Self-important college freshman walking along the beach took it upon himself to explain to a senior citizen resting on the steps why it was impossible for the older generation to understand his generation.
“You grew up in a different world, actually an almost primitive one,” the student said loud enough for others to hear.
“The young people of today grew up with television, jet planes, space travel, man walking on the moon. We have nuclear energy, ships and cell phones, computers with light speed … and many more.”
After a brief silence, the senior citizen responded:
“You’re right, son. We didn’t have those things when we were young, so we invented them. Now, you arrogant little squirt, what are you doing for the next generation?”
