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Regarding today's youth as it relates to school...


Coytee

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I hated school. I graduated BOTTOM of my class. Yet, I'm the most successful person from my class, can problem solve, and if pitted against any of them today- I'd most likely trump them.I went on to being accepted into a Mercedes-Benz engineering school, and the instructors hated me because I never once opened a book, or SEEMED like I was paying attention. Strangely I just absorb information. I talked to an instructor after class one day and told him, you may quiz / test me at any time and if I can't keep up, I'll change my tactics.But I know what works for me. And there- when allowed to learn MY way. I graduated TOP of my class.

You are probably Dyslexic with a high IQ. Have you ever been tested for Dyslexia??Roger

Never been tested. My spelling is pretty good. Wouldn't dyslexia cause jumbled spelling when composing sentences?

Not necessarily , I have ADHD AND Dyslexia with a tested IQ of 148 and I do have problems with spelling and grammar, but Dyslexia is a Genaric term that covers thousands of variables, just like Retardation for example, we have downs syndrome retarded people and many other sub categories, not to mention where on the intellectual spectrum do they fall, then we also have idiot savant's that are still retarded. Another example word be CVA, Cerebro Vascular Infarct, Stroke. This term tells us that there is literally brain death, but it does not say what part of the brain is dead or what the deficits are. Further more we have TIAs or Trans Ischemic Attacks which are more like a brain bruise, but this does not tell us locale or where the deficits are, only that they are temporary, usually resolving within 24 hours.

I for one do not see words / letters backwards, what I do have going on is I will see words that rhyme registering in my brain. The paragraph may have the word brain in it, and I wont realize that I read the word as train until half way down the second paragraph and I will think, well that didn't make sense and have to reread the whole paragraph over.

Like a Computer, I have an exceptional Hard Drive, my problem is imputing and outputting Data. I also have trouble writing.

Like you, I never ever did homework or took books home, I learned by very little listening in class because of the ADHD. I also never took books home in College, but instead listened to tapes of the class or even more so, by reading my note takers notes. I got 134 % in Anatomy and Physiology because the instructor had to give extra credit because the class as a hole did so poorly. In fact I only had to answer 2 questions out of 100 on a 100 point final to have achieved an A-

I hope all of this rambling gives you a better perspective of what you might have going on, and there is help in College if you should so choose to take classes at a later date. I for example qualified for "Books for the Blind" which are your text books read to you on tape. I also qualified to have someone take notes for me. Someone actually makes a few bucks for writing their notes on carbon sheets and you get the copies. Because of my extended processing time, I qualified for time and a half on tests as well. Kind of leads we to wonder how I might fare on an IQ exam if I were allowed more than standard time for processing???

Oh well, I hope you found this informative as well as possibly helpful!!

Roger

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I knew you would come back with examples like that.  Why?  Because learning comes easily.

:rolleyes: Maybe you're psychic too.   B) 

 

What your examples demonstrate is that some do not truly learn.

I don't see it that way. I believe it demonstrates that book smarts has pretty much nothing to do with ambition, your willingness to work in the first place, or the random events in somebody's life that may affect their success or lack thereof.

Ecclesiastes 9:11 "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

 

As far as the teacher, you can live comfortably on that.

Comfort in general has more to do with living within your means than being successful. There are Army privates who retire millionaires and households bringing in two 6 digit salaries who live paycheck to paycheck with insane debt. Just because they're comfortable doesn't prove that their intelligence got them to that point, and if somebody is not living comfortably, that doesn't mean their lack of book smarts is to blame.

Edited by MetropolisLakeOutfitters
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I knew you would come back with examples like that.  Why?  Because learning comes easily.

:rolleyes: Maybe you're psychic too.   B) 

 

What your examples demonstrate is that some do not truly learn.

I don't see it that way. I believe it demonstrates that book smarts has pretty much nothing to do with ambition, your willingness to work in the first place, or the random events in somebody's life that may affect their success or lack thereof.

Ecclesiastes 9:11 "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

Oldtimer:  A bunch of old jews talking.

As far as the teacher, you can live comfortably on that.

Comfort in general has more to do with living within your means than being successful. There are Army privates who retire millionaires and households bringing in two 6 digit salaries who live paycheck to paycheck with insane debt. Just because they're comfortable doesn't prove that their intelligence got them to that point, and if somebody is not living comfortably, that doesn't mean their lack of book smarts is to blame.

Oldtimer: Living within your means proves that you are smart and intelligent so I must disagree.

Edited by oldtimer
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We are now at the point where "success" and "comfortable" might need defining.  I never said success in terms of living comfortably.  My point was actually the opposite.  One who is driven to "success" is not the same as one who uses the tools for success without ambition to live easily.

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Living within your means proves that you are smart and intelligent so I must disagree.

Many of the poorest dumbest people live within their means. I've seen a guy who I know to be a horrible student who flunked out of engineering school work at a retail shop and have to calculate down to the penny how much mac and cheese and chicken fingers cost per meal in order to pull this off.

It seems that according to your logic, pretty much everybody is smart and intelligent. Poor people who live within their means, high rollers that don't, high rollers that do... everybody's smart, trophies for everyone.

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I have no intention in going back to college. I did regular college and found it boring. You never are allowed to ask why in school. I hate that. When I went to the Benz engineering school you better love to ask why! I'm exceptional at what I do, and can't dream of making a change.

-- short story--

Best teacher I ever had was in high school. First day he handed out the brand new text books and said sign your name in the cover and turn these back in. We all handed the books forward and he put them back in his cabinet.

He let the class try and figure out why he did this... And after a long pause he said, those books are full of lies and half-truths, written by the victors of history. What we'll be doing is looking at all of the story.

He then instructed all of us to get out our notebooks and write on the front covers, "think", and he told us If I ask you a question, no matter how obscure or unrelated to what we're discussing in class, you had better have some kind of opinion AND be able to think and defend it (even if the opinion changed as we learned more)

This teacher was the assistant football coach and shredded beyond belief. All the guys wanted to be him, all the girls wanted to sleep with him.

You know who always struggled in his class? The athletes and A+ students who can memorize but can't think.

The kids that excelled in his courses were the kids who skipped school and didn't pay attention from boredom....we at this $hit up !!

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Negative.  He was smart enough to get into engineering school, and has now applied that to getting by with what he has.  Most people do not live within their means.  check out the average household debt figures, or the average credit card debt figures.  You are misinterpreting what you call my logic.

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Ecclesiastes 9:11 "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

 

Wise old Solomon.  He knew.  Yet he was an example of how by chance (being born the son of a king) "riches" go to "men of understanding."  Very rarely, as we know and he knew.  Some scholars have dubbed Solomon as an early theistic existentialist.

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There was a time when GM had 400,000 workers with lifetime jobs. That scheme is over, and is not coming back. So, what's the point of getting their old education?

The vast majority of those people didn't have a job that required a good education.

 

 

But the industrial system wanted a trained workforce, and that's what the education system was designed to crank out - literate people. Of course it was not 100% successful, and the outcome looks like a bell curve, but the concept was to create a literate workforce that could follow instructions and do basic arithmetic.

 

 

Basic arithmetic can mean (to some) that lunch is at 12 o'clock.

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Ambition is way overrated. The USA has inherited a Calvinistic tradition that glorifies ambition to the point of dangerous obsession. It's ok for some, a disaster for many others. Just look at the results here!

The problem is when you confuse ambition with narcissism, as well as using your job as, well what's the psychological term, self identity or something.

For example my uncle that I previously mentioned, he was a hiking, survival, and kayaking guide for years. He never understood why people would pay him good money to take them out in the middle of nowhere during what few vacation days they had, then spend most of the time bragging about their jobs, yet the whole time they were dependent on him for survival, even though a good guide makes it seem as if this isn't the case.

Now, is ambition the problem here, or is it narcissism and an unhealthy reliance on your career to craft your self identity the problem? I tend to think the latter. My uncle could use more ambition. The people he guided could use less narcissism.

 

Yes, we work more hours per year than most other countries, but score only in the middle in happiness.

Working more hours has more to do with cultural values, and the scores on happiness tests don't really have anything to do with that even though it might seem like it.

For example, consider Japan. They work tons of hours, and rarely take vacations, you are looked upon as a softie and a slacker if you take long stretches of time off over there. HOWEVER, another part of their culture is that if they asked if they are happy, they consider it to be boasting if they say yes. So, they say no. But, ask anybody who has stayed in Japan for long stretches of time and they will likely say they seem happier than we are.

Let's go on the opposite end of the spectrum to some of the European countries like Denmark and Norway. They take all kinds of time off. Also part of their culture is that when they are asked if they are happy on these tests, many consider it their patriotic duty to say yes, and many others consider it to be a big joke so they answer yes even if they are miserable and have the same problems we do.

On the surface these things seems correlated, but that's not really the case.

Ambition really has nothing to do with not taking time off anyway. If anything, in many cases it is the opposite. Some of the most ambitious people work their butts off with freedom is the goal. I am part of this crowd. I cherish my time off and would like to retire by age 50 which is why I'm trying to set up multiple income sources. I don't do it just because I like to work. I do it because I long for freedom, and there are few ways of truly obtaining that in this country. From my point of view, working a day job until you are too old to enjoy life is way overrated. Maybe if people were a bit more ambitious, that doesn't have to be the case.

I told my 18 year old daughter just a few days ago that what they don't teach you in college is that sooner or later, you'll realize that the goal of working is to become independent enough that you don't have to work. I am at this point. People like this are my heroes:

http://www3.forbes.com/personal-finance/how-this-couple-retired-in-their-30s-to-travel-the-world/1/

Is that overrated?

Edited by MetropolisLakeOutfitters
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Retirement doesn't guarantee freedom from the burdens of life. What guarantee do we have that we will live until retirement? Burdening oneself during the journey guarantees that most of ones life will be wasted chasing a time in their life that they may never achieve. Enjoy the journey.

Keith

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What guarantee do we have that we will live until retirement? Burdening oneself during the journey guarantees that most of ones life will be wasted chasing a time in their life that they may never achieve. 

 

All the more reason to try to retire early.  My goal is to retire about 20 years earlier than the norm.  That's a long time.  

Edited by MetropolisLakeOutfitters
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