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Quick! What do these incredible achievers have in common?
Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling, Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Zuckerberg, Julie Andrews, Larry Ellison, John D. Rockefeller, Alicia Keys, Tom Hanks, William Randolph Hearst, Debbi Fields, Orville and Wilbur Wright, J. Paul Getty and Simon Cowell.
Give up? Wait, here are some more:
Will Rogers, Will Smith, William Soroyan, Billy Beane, George Bernard Shaw, Shawn White, George Gershwin, Walt Disney, Ellen DeGeneres, William Faulkner, Ray Kroc, Harrison Ford, Robert Frost, R. Buckminster Fuller, Leonardo DiCaprio and Bill Gates.
The first (Jobs) and the last (Gates) should give it away. You can find more of the group by googling “The College Dropouts Hall of Fame.” It’s startling how many incredibly successful people either quit high school or left college early.
Like the Scarecrow who was brilliant long before the Wizard awarded him a diploma, what they needed to know they learned informally. None of them needed a college degree to attain success. As DiCaprio pointed out after he closed the book on his formal education, "Life is my college now."
Don’t think that I’m suggesting that students follow their example and drop out, because I’m not. Only one percent of the world’s population has a college degree. When applying for anything, being able to check “college graduate” on the application form can only help.
I am advocating that schools formally teach the lessons that some of the greatest achievers ever somehow learned somewhere outside formal education’s claustrophobic walls. Why the heck aren’t we teaching whatever it is they learned that helped them become great?
One thing they all had was a passion and a relentless desire to pursue it. It ought to be an outrage when our students are allowed to graduate from high school - and even college - without a passion. When schools are being evaluated, they aren’t judged by how many of their students have found and are vigorously pursuing passions. Why not?
I don’t know how book smart Debbie Fields is. I don’t know what Billy Beane got on his SAT. I have no idea what Alicia Keys’ IQ is or what kind of grades Tom Hanks got in school. All I know is that they’re all smart. Very smart. And we need to teach our kids the kind of smart they are.
A fascinating man came into my classroom to talk to my economics students. He is from Australia. He didn’t drop out of college because he didn’t go to college. He did sell his first company for 40 million dollars, and he was only getting started.
I asked him why he still works when he doesn’t have to. His answer was predictable, but I wanted my kids to hear it from a multi-multi-millionaire. “Because I am passionate about what I do. I like doing it.”
He didn’t discourage my students from going to college, but he encouraged them to learn what they could use. He said his most valuable high school course wasn’t calculus. It was speech and drama because, “I learned how to present.”
Sadly, ironically, I couldn’t help noticing that while he was talking, over in the corner, there was a small group of “good students” ignoring him. They were cramming a homework assignment.
Calculus.
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