Bill Gates: 11 Things You Don’t Learn in School
Posted March 14, 2011
on:- In: 28559
- 11 Comments
A physician client of mine passed on to me this list, from Bill Gates’ talk in a high school. There is a good bit of wisdom there. If you have kids in high school, pass this on to them.
Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity.
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.
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11 Responses to "Bill Gates: 11 Things You Don’t Learn in School"

Haha! Love the last piece of advice!


This is an apocryphal story. Bill Gates never said or wrote this.
The text is an email chain edited version of an op-ed piece that appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune on September 19, 1996. In fact, the piece was written by Charles J. Sykes, who also authored of “Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good about Themselves, but Can’t Read, Write, or Add”. Bill Gates had nothing to do with this.


I guess school misses alot of lessons, lesson concerned with real life, with practicality in addition to the art of living. All people go to same schools same books they want us to grow this way, other elite go to other schools they teach them the shortcut ways and how to live efficiently. Few people of regular schools got the chance, while the elite will surely get the chance. I suggest that we get the real education, not the rusted one.


So, Michael Zhuang….maybe you should take Bill Gates out of the title & insert the real author & where it came from? Give credit where it’s due. 🙂


Your friend wasn’t lying, he was just passing on wrong information. This list, prior to it being attributed to Bill Gates in 2000, was claimed to be written by Kurt Vonnegut in ’98 and earlier than that, a Charles Sykes book in ’96. None were true, Ann Landers once ran it as Author Unknown.
I think that’s where it stays…

March 14, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Great list! I’m going to link to it on my site. Love #11.