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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
The Rules
1. Life is not fair. Get used to it.
2. The Real World won't care as much as your school does about your self
esteem. It'll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about
yourself.
3. Sorry, you won't make $60,000 a year right out of high school. And you
won't be a vice president or have a company car. You may even have to wear
a uniform that doesn't have a designer label.
4. You are not entitled.
5. No matter what your daddy says, you are not a princess.
6. No, you cannot be everything you dream...
7. If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have
tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he's not going to
ask you how you FEEL about it.
8. Your navel is not that interesting. Don't spend your life gazing at it.
9. Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn't.
10. Life is actually more like dodgeball than your gym teacher thinks.
11. After you graduate, you won't be competing with people who were raised to
be wimps on the playground.
12. Humiliation is part of life. Deal with it.
13. You are not going to the NBA, so hold off on the bling and spare us the
attitude.
14. Looking like a slut does not empower you.
15. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a
different word for burger flipping. They called it "opportunity."
16. Your parents and your little brother are not as embarrassing as you think.
What's embarrassing is ingratitude, rudeness, and sulkiness.
17. Before you were born your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They
got that way paying your bills, driving you around, saving for your
education, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how
idealistic you are.
18. Life is not divided into semesters. And you don't get summers off.
19. It's not your parents' fault. If you screw up, you are responsible.
20. Smoking does not make you look cool...it makes you look moronic
21. You're offended, so what? No, really. So what?
22. You are not a victim.
23. Someday you may have to grow up and actually move out of your parents'
house.
24. Batman's girlfriend is right: "It's not who you are underneath, but what you
do that defines you."
25. Pi does not care what you think.
26. A moral compass does not come as standard equipment.
27. Your sex organs were not meant to engage in high order thinking or
decision-making.
28. Somebody may be watching.
29. Learn to deal with hypocrisy.
30. Zero-tolerance = zero common sense.
31. Naked people look different in real life.
32. Television is not real life.
33. Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.
34. Winners have a philosophy of life. So do losers.
35. If your butt has its own zip code it's not because McDonald's forced you to
eat all those Big Macs. If you smoke, it's not Joe Camel's fault.
36. You are not immortal.
37. Being connected does not mean you aren't clueless.
38. Look people in the eye when you meet them.
39. People in black and white movies were really in color in real life. And no, the
world did not begin when you were born.
40. Despite the billion-dollar campaign to turn your brain into tapioca pudding,
try to learn to think clearly and logically.
41. You are not the first and you are not the only one who has gone through
what you are going through.
42. Change the Oil.
43. Don't let the success of others depress you.
44. Your colleagues are not your friends and your friends aren't your family.
45. Grownups forget how scary it is to be your age.
46. Check on the guinea pig in the basement.
47. You aren't perfect and you don't have to be.
48. Tell yourself the story of your life. Have a point.
49. Don't forget to say thank you.
50. Enjoy this while you can.
Preface
There are two things you need to know about this book:
First, the world is full of touchy-feely books of affirmation. This is not one of them.
Second: these rules were not written by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
I mention this because these 50 Rules began as a mere 10 rules that I used in a television
commentary back in the mid-1990s; they grew to 12, and then 14*. Along the way, they
took on a life of their own, especially after they were somehow attributed to Gates. With
that imprimatur, the original rules raced across cyberspace, showed up in thousands of
emails and websites, were picked up by newspapers and an assorted collection of
politicians and motivational speakers and commentators, including radio's Paul Harvey
and advice columnist Ann Landers - all attributing the rules to the Master of Software.
This was flattering and a bit exasperating. I enjoyed the fact that so many found the rules
valuable, but it was a mixed blessing when my own email box began to fill with the
brilliant insights of Bill Gates.
Eventually, the word got out that Gates was innocent of the deed and that the blame
rested solely with a guy named Sykes. Websites devoted to tracking down urban legends
actually devoted pages to debunking the Gates-link. One debunker, www.snopes.com
commented: "Why it's attributed to Gates is a mystery to us; it doesn't really sound the
least bit like something he would write. Possibly, the item the Internet-circulated version
of the list generally ends with ('Be nice to nerds') struck a chord with someone who
views Gates as the ultimate successful nerd of all time." That's as good a theory as I've
heard.
But how to account for the enduring appeal of the original rules, which survived being
delinked from Gates? I think it was because they were such a blunt contrast to the thumb-
sucking feel-good infantilism that has become so common in American education and
culture.
Previous generations thought it was their duty to prepare young people for the ups and
downs of life as a matter of course and as an obligation. There is a long and rich literary
tradition of books giving sound, realistic advice to young people, written by people who
thought it was their job to provide children with a guide to growing up, rather than to
amuse and entertain them, or be their buddies. Today, however, children can spend years
in the company of credentialed goo-goos who not only miseducate them about the real
world, but fail to give them the tools to make their way in it. This book is intended as a
counter-point: think of it as a user's manual for the real world.
The themes in this book have been ably addressed by Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally
Satel in One Nation Under Therapy ; Jean Twenge in Generation Me ; and Michael
Barone in Hard America, Soft America . I have also drawn on the work of author James
Stenson (whose work including Upbringing deserves a much larger audience); the rules
also draw inspiration from Lord Chesterfield, Teddy Roosevelt, La Rochefoucauld, P.J.
O'Rourke, H. L. Mencken, Viktor Frankl, as well as a talented group of writers ranging
from bloggers Lance Burri, Paul Graham, Rick Esenberg, and Tom McMahon to authors
John Hughes and Anatole France. But the primary source has been the ongoing march of
folly, inanity, and pabulum in both popular culture and public education; for the constant
inspiration, I'm eternally grateful.
I am also grateful for the ongoing support of my colleagues at Journal Broadcast for
providing me an outlet for the early version of these rules and helping me develop some
the issues on my radio show and in my columns. Special thanks to my agent Glen
Hartley, who believed in this book, and my editor at St. Martin's Press, George Witte,
who saw the possibilities of the full 50 Rules.
And, as always, thanks to my wife Janet, who has been my constant counselor and
inspiration. For year she has been encouraging me to expand the original 14 Rules and to
write this book. Without her it would not exist. I would say that I don't know how to
repay her, but I know that she has a lengthy list of ideas and suggestions, many of them
having to do with remodeling. I love you always.
Charles Sykes
July, 2006
Introduction
Speaking to the nation on the occasion of the space shuttle Challenger disaster* President
Ronald Reagan said that the tragedy reminded us of a "profound truth - the future is not
free, the story of all human progress is one of a struggle against all odds.
"We learned again that this America, which Abraham Lincoln called the last best
hope of man on Earth, was built on heroism and noble sacrifice.... We think back
to the pioneers of an earlier century, and the sturdy souls who took their families
and their belongings and set out into the frontier of the American West. Often,
they met with terrible hardship. Along the Oregon Trail you can still see the grave
markers of those who fell on the way. But grief only steeled them to the journey
ahead."
Heroism? Sacrifice? Struggle? Hardship? Grief? What could Reagan have been thinking?
What about self-esteem? Self-actualization? The power of a group hug?
Somebody call child protective services. Bring in the grief counselors, because obviously
we have to protect the kids from this sort of thing.
***
Things have changed in America.
Somehow a nation of confident, self-reliant adults has been replaced by one run by
people who think we need to shield children from such evils as dodgeball and tag.
"A child with a rare disease may have to be put in a bubble," Jonathan Yardley once
wrote, "but putting the entire American system of elementary and secondary education
into one borders on insanity. Yet that is precisely what has happened."
The symbol of our time, however, is not so much a bubble (which has a certain romantic
science fiction appeal) but the more mundane bubble-wrap. Instead of preparing children
to deal with the inevitable scratches, bumps and bruises of growing up, our modern-day
nannies insist that we should swaddle them in bubble wrap -- and not even the kind that
you can have fun with by popping.
The modern bubble wrap mentality assumes that children are so frail and easily bruised,
that they have to be insulated from... life. No losing, no disappointments, no harsh reality
checks. But like a child who grows up in a bubble without developing any immunities to
the outside world, a child raised in bubble wrap is not prepared to deal with the
symptoms of life: failure, frustration, and having to make choices tougher than the color
of their new ipod sleeve.
In many ways these are the best of times to be an American child: an age of prosperity,
choice, technological plenty and parental indulgence. When have young people ever been
more cared for, deferred to, or pampered? But these also are one of the worst of times,
because seldom if ever has a generation been less well prepared to cope with the world
they will face. We aren't just failing to make "rugged individuals." We aren't even
making competent adults.
In a 2004 Psychology Today article, Hara Estroff Marano noted that the result of these
frantic efforts to cushion children from bumps may explain the rise of psychological
disorders and depression in what Jean Twenge calls "Generation Me."
"With few challenges all their own, kids are unable to forge their creative adaptations to
the normal vicissitudes of life," Marano wrote. "That not only makes them risk-averse, it
makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process they're robbed of
identity, meaning and a sense of accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real
happiness. Forget, too, about perseverance, not simply a moral virtue but a necessary life
skill. These turn out to be the spreading psychic fault lines of 21st-century youth.
Whether we want to or not, we're on our way to creating a nation of wimps."
Author/commentator Michael Barone suggests that the country today is divided between
what he calls "Hard America," which stresses competition and results, and "Soft
America," which coddles and protects . And indeed, there seems to be an ever-widening
gap between those two Americas.
One America teaches their kids responsibility, self-control, and accountability. The Other
America files lawsuits claiming their children suffer from "emotional distress" if they get
kicked off the basketball team.
One America overcomes adversity and recognizes that we are all tested by bad times. The
Other America thinks kids could be traumatized by having their papers marked with red
pens.
Where some of the earliest Founders saw America as a shining city on the hill, the other
America sees the potential for a lot of slip and fall cases.
A Culture of Complacency
In his classic, "Screwtape Letters," C.S. Lewis wrote:
We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of
which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that
vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all
running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood....Cruel
ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless and idle ones
against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism...
I suspect that Lewis would easily recognize public education today. Even as evidence
mounts that we have created a generation of smug, self-satisfied, entitled wimps,
disconnected from reality and unprepared for the tests that the world has in store for
them, legions of educationists, therapists, counselors, victimologists, bureaucrats, and
parents continue to obsess about how to pump up the self-esteem and bubble-wrap the
feelings of the younger generation.
This book is dedicated to the proposition that precisely the opposite is needed: that what
young people need today is not more vague sappy nostrums about "being yourself," or
"following your bliss." What they need is a reality check that tells them that life isn't fair,
they aren't entitled, and the world won't be caring about their feelings quite as much as
mommy and daddy do. In other words, it is intended as an antidote to our culture of
complacency and indulgence.
Given all of our anxieties and assorted panics involving child-rearing, it may seem
contradictory, even perverse, to suggest we have become complacent about raising our
children. But a culture has to be awfully smug about the big things to devote as much
time as we do to issues like the weight of backpacks, the onerous burden of homework
and the self-esteem destroying threat of class rankings. The very triviality of our concerns
is evidence that we think we have the big stuff pretty much in hand.
But despite the gold stars and happy faces, there is growing evidence that we are falling
further behind in preparing young people for the challenges of the emerging world.
American children continue to lag behind much of the industrialized world in both math
and science, while the results of recent surveys of their literacy and knowledge of history,
civics and geography hover between appalling and "Oh my God."
In December 2005, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy concluded that the average
college graduate's reading ability had declined significantly in the last decade. Fewer
than a third of college graduates scored at the "proficient" level in the most recent test.
The next month, January 2006, saw more bad news: a survey by the American Institutes
for Research found that a majority of the students at four year colleges couldn't do things
like understand the arguments of a newspaper editorial or interpret a table about blood
pressure and exercise. The same study fund that only 20% of college students
completing a four year degree had "basic quantitative literacy skills," which meant they
are "unable to estimate if their car had enough gasoline to get to the next gas station or
calculate the total cost of ordering office supplies."
Despite warnings from business, educational, and political leaders about lagging math
and science skills, both parents and students seem to be snoozing through the alarms. A
2006 poll found that most parents thought "things are fine" with the amount of science
and math their children were being taught. Despite international comparisons showing
math scores lagging behind much of the industrialized world and complaints from
industry that students were showing up lacking basic scientific knowledge, only half of
the students in middle and high school thought that understanding science or knowing
math was "essential" for them to succeed in the real world after high school.
Precisely which world do they think that is? The one where technological innovation
won't matter? Where they won't need science or math to get good paying professional
jobs? Where they don't need to worry about competition from countries that emphasize
higher math skills? Where they won't have to understand complex scientific arguments
about things like global warming?
There are obvious practical consequences to this tsunami of ignorance: the 2005 "Skills
Gap Report" commissioned by the National Association of Manufacturers found that the
vast majority of American manufacturers - 90% --are experiencing a shortage of
qualified, high skilled employees, including scientists and engineers. The lack of skills,
the report warned, is endangering the "ability of the country as a whole to compete in the
global economy."
When businesses were asked whether the nation's K-12 schools were doing a good job
preparing students for the workplace, an overwhelming 84 % said "no." As global
pressure intensifies, the need of American businesses for more qualified and skilled
employees will also become more urgent.
In other words, life is about to become even more competitive than it is now.
"You don't bring three billion people into the world economy overnight without huge
consequences," observed Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel, "especially from three societies
(like India, China, and Russia) with rich educational heritages."
But the problem is not simply that young people lack the academic skills to compete;
there is ample evidence that they also lack the attitudes and values. "Even if schools
perform well in their traditional role of increasing math, science and reading
comprehension skills," the report from the National Association of Manufacturers noted,
"this would not address the top, pressing concern of employers - the need for attendance,
timeliness, and work ethic."
In other words: showing up, having the right attitude, and being willing to work hard.
The lack of those basic skills suggests that schools deserve only part of the blame for
dumbing down our kids; parents and the culture as a whole have also had a hand in
creating a self-absorbed, sulky generation whose expectations and sense of entitlement
are so out of whack with the world they are entering.
So it's not enough to merely change the education system: we also have to change the
culture that created the dumbed-down schools that are leaving so many students behind.
And just as the problem extends beyond the schools, the damage is not simply economic.
Evidence continues to mount that the bubble-wrapped generation is also finding itself
badly handicapped in dealing with the other major challenges of life: from relationships
and personal responsibility, to distinguishing right from wrong without a reliable moral
compass. And despite the efforts of grownups to keep them endlessly entertained and
insulated, there are signs many young people are increasingly unhappy and dissatisfied.
Colleges report that the severity of student mental problems, including depression,
anxiety, and eating disorders have been rising since the late 1980s.
For many children raised in bubble-wrap, life is turning out to be both overwhelming and
disappointing. They were sent forth with grossly inflated expectations and wholly
inadequate tools to cope with life's inevitable switchbacks and speed-bumps. By
definition, expectations can be infinite, especially when they aren't tempered by reality;
so the let-downs and flame-outs are almost inevitable.
In other words, by pumping their heads full of feel-good mush, the nanny-class has set
them up to fail: educationally, economically, and emotionally.
If all of this seems unduly harsh, I apologize in advance. My intention is constructive: I
want to help prepare young people to be responsible, competent, confident, self-reliant,
independent, realistic individuals who are armed with the inner resources and the habits
of mind to resist the blather and blandishments of the world they are about to enter.
I've tried to group the rules somewhat thematically, but they do not need to be read in
order and there is some overlap among them. Some will seem more valuable than others,
while others will be downright offensive (See Rule 21: "You're offended, so what? No,
really. So what?"). Within the rarefied halls of modern educational nannyism, there will
undoubtedly be cries of outrage and indignation.
But as H.L. Mencken once noted, "In all ages there arise protests from tender men against
the bitterness of criticism, especially social criticism. They are the same men who, when
they come down with malaria, patronize a doctor who prescribes, not quinine, but
marshmallows."
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Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication:
Child rearing.
Children -- Conduct of life.
Parenting.