Welcome to Part 2 of our look at Charles J. Sykes‘ Rules that Kids Won’t Learn in School. If you missed it, you can read part 1 here.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
The desire for instant gratification is so strong in this generation. Kids want the kind of job dad has, with the accompanying kind of income, right now. So-called menial labor is good for teaching our children several lessons, including the importance of education (“You don’t want to be doing this for the rest of your life, do you?”), budgeting, and giving more effort than is required.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault; so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Kids learn quickly to spread the blame around. Just this week my son, when explaining his bad grade on a Social Studies test, began his defense with “I told mom that I needed help…” Society is all about the blame. Our kids need to be different.
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.
Preach it, Brother 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 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.
To be honest, there isn’t much about school that really corresponds to real life. Kids should know this so that they can better appreciate and enjoy the precious school years.
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.
True, true.
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.
TV & video games are the scourge of this generation. It’s just too easy to tune out of real life and plug into the tube. It’s our job as parents to dutifully police our kids in this area. Love the subtle Friends reference.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
Maybe, maybe not. Still, being nice to the kids lower on the social pecking order is a noble virtue.
Those are the rules according to Charles J. Sykes. They’re not perfect, but there is some good stuff in there.