1DO0vxU

John Stuart Mill took a different approach. He argued, “it is better to be a human being
dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the
fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the
question.”
I’m with Mill on this one. One of the things that school is for is to teach our children to
understand and relish the idea of intellectualism, to develop into something more than a
purpose-driven tool for the industrial state.
Fortunately for my side of the argument, the economy is now reinforcing this notion. Simple
skills and cheap pleasures (bread and circuses) worked for a long time, but they no longer scale
to quiet the masses. The basic skills aren’t enough to support the circuses that we’ve been sold.
The fork in this road is ever more pronounced because there’s now so much more to choose
from. A citizen can spend his spare time getting smarter, more motivated, and more involved,
or he can tune out, drop out, and entertain himself into a stupor. The same devices deliver
either or both from the online ether—and the choice that people make is one that’s going to
develop early, based on the expectations of our teachers and the standards of our peers.
We can teach kids to engage in poetry, to write poetry, and to demand poetry—or we can take a
shortcut and settle for push-pin, YouTube, and LOLcats.
*Push-pin was a truly inane game in which kids would stick pins in a cloth or a hat brim and
wrestle to knock one over. A little like Angry Birds, but without batteries.
33. Who will teach bravery?
The essence of the connection revolution is that it rewards those who connect, stand out, and
take what feels like a chance.
Can risk-taking be taught? Of course it can. It gets taught by mentors, by parents, by great
music teachers, and by life.
Why isn’t it being taught every day at that place we send our kids to?
Bravery in school is punished, not rewarded. The entire institution is organized around
avoiding individual brave acts, and again and again we hear from those who have made a
difference, telling us that they became brave despite school, not because of it.
Harvard Business School turns out management consultants in far greater numbers than it
develops successful bootstrapping entrepreneurs. Ralph Lauren, David Geffen and Ted Turner
all dropped out of college because they felt the real challenges lay elsewhere.
Stop Stealing Dreams Free Printable Edition 26