What you learn at school are facts, known facts.
Your job at school is to accumulate and remember facts. The more you can remember, the better you do. Many times, those who fail at school are not interested in the facts, or maybe the facts are not put to them in a way they find interesting.
Some people don’t have a great faculty for memory. It doesn’t mean they are stupid. It means their imagination hasn’t been fired up by academic tuition. People who are conventionally clever get jobs on their qualifications (the past), not on their desire to succeed (the future). Very simply, they get overtaken by those who continually strive to be better than they are. If a goal exists, there is no limit to anyone’s achievement.
Or as Bob Proctor stated, You’ll see people with very impressive degrees from prestigious universities who are struggling through their life. They don’t have enough money; they don’t hold down a good position. If they have their own company, they are either struggling or go bankrupt, or go out of business. You think, “They’re so smart; how could this possibly happen?
The truth is, they’re not very smart at all. They have gathered a lot of information, but they don’t use it or don’t know how to use it.
Don’t use it? That may not be a completely accurate statement – maybe it has limited value, maybe no value? What do we “learn” in school? I would submit to you that what we “learn” is already known. We memorize things; we read, we recite, and we move on to the next topic. We are being educated the wrong way and, in many instances, we are not being educated at all – we are merely gathering information. Think about that for a moment; we are merely gathering information!
Henry Ford
Did not even make it to the eighth grade – never went to high school, let alone college. At age sixteen, he walked 12 miles from Dearborn MI to Detroit looking for work.
Andrew Carnegie
He had no access to a formal education. At the age of twelve, he worked from dawn to dusk in a cotton mill earning $1.20 per week.
Thomas Edison
Three months of schooling in his entire life. At the age of seven, his teacher sent a note home with young Thomas in a sealed envelope to his mother stating not to send him back to school – it wasn’t going to be of any value.
Failed more than 10,000 times in his career. Edison himself famously said, “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Albert Einstein
Dropped out of school at age fifteen. He was a challenged student with delayed speech issues. One of his teachers told him he would never amount to anything. Einstein’s father experienced repeated failures in business – at one point they moved, leaving young Einstein behind at a boarding house, and six months later he ran away.
Benjamin Franklin
Born the 10th son of 17 children from a poor family who made soap and candles. Franklin’s formal education ended at the age of 10. At age 12, he was working as an apprentice to his brother James. At age seventeen, the beatings from his brother James became intolerable and he ran away, which was illegal in early America.
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
-Pablo Picasso
“True education does not consist merely in the acquiring of a few facts of science, history, literature, or art, but in the development of character.”
-David O. McKay
“A man’s real education begins after he has left school. True education is gained through the discipline of life.”
-Henry Ford
“Success takes an investment in time, dedication, and sacrifice. This is true education. It is a process.”
-Robert Kiyosaki
