School Will Never Make Your Child a Steve Jobs
Stop trying to stick your beautiful round children in a square hole called formal education.
Case #1: The Missing Siblings
The neighbor’s kids who used to play with my child had disappeared. It had been at least a month without seeing the siblings. Out of the blue, they reappeared one day, with the sister looking much leaner. I couldn’t help but ask where they’ve been.
“Oh, you know, just school. We have been attending Milligan. We have been very busy with schoolwork ever since,” answered the brother.
Let me be honest here: As parents, you must be out of your mind to assign your young children to formal education to the point that they can’t find time to come out and play.
I’ve been living in the Bay Area for a few years and Milligan is the name of the game among Indian tech parents who believe the US education is inferior than that at home.
Innovator or Schemer
If you are expecting your children to be the next Satya Nadella or Sundar Pichai, you are on the right track. Go ahead and settle, because you aren’t going to raise the next Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page, or Tiger Woods. You may have a probability of raising a highly successful corporate climber, but you will have almost cut the chance of raising an innovator or compassionate world-changer down to zero.
To thrive in a formal classroom, kids only need to be quick to learn and develop an almost psychotic ability of observing and gaming the system (The trait you see often in people who thrive on Wall Street, and we all know where that had brought the US economy in 2008). They develop superficial obedience and discipline and observership of how the system works and game it to their advantage, especially when there are rewards (and punishments) at stake. Yes, gold stars and heart stickers on the classroom’s leader board simply translates to money and fame, often at any cost.
Case #2: The Valentine’s Day Writing
Recently, a friend shared a photo of her son’s Valentine’s Day writing on Facebook. It reads:
“I love mommy because she lets me buy toys”
Unknowingly, she still went on the share and brag about it. She takes pride of disciplining her kid through material rewards, training him to effectively grow into a psychopathic gamer of system who will only idolize returns on investment. Now it’s just candies and cheap toys from the dollar store. Then it gets more and more expensive. The latest smartphone and trendiest laptop. The coolest car. He will manipulate and scheme against her to get what he wants until she can’t afford to provide to him. That’s when he will change into a different person and stop listening and doing anything she says.
Raising an Imperfect Little Risk-taker
How will your children be brave enough to take risks and let go of the statuses and certifications that come with society in the pursue of something meaningful that might very well be intangible to everyone else in the world but themselves?
When all you do is subjecting them to these standardization so early on in life through formal education and leave very little time for unstructured discovery, it is very probable that your children will never acquire the characters many great risk-takers have.
Steve Jobs wouldn’t have had stayed with Google until he becomes a CEO.
The bad news is, you only have a few years during your child’s early life to build her character, emotional intelligence, and self-esteem. After the floodgate has closed, there is very little you can do.
We all know who Steve Jobs was and what kind of life he had led. He often took a leap of faith based on his gut many times over in his life. Steve Jobs wouldn’t have had stayed with Google until he became a CEO, like Sundar Pichai. In the most extreme case, but quite possible, he would have had been labeled as a person with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), an invented disease used to label children who do not conform and comply well to formal structures.
If in your home, aside from textbooks, your children’s book collection is not as big or bigger than yours, you are doing it wrong. Your only job as a parent is to provide the easy mean for your children to find their own way and learn at their own pace. That responsibility lies in little details like being your children’s librarian — arranging their books to make sure they see every one of them, clearing off their messy table to make sure they always have a clean space to draw, and encourage them to look and marvel at the tiniest things in life.
We should stop trying to stick your round, triangle, trapezoidal, and all the beautifully-shaped children in a square hole called formal education. We are hurting them and thus the world in which they will run.
