LifeHack recently promoted what was billed as a Bill Gates quote. It wasn’t. But, it goes, “If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure.” When I first read it, the last line sounded like a non sequitur… just another gratuitous back door attack on teachers. How would tenure relate to how tough your boss is? How would tenure relate to how tough you
r teacher is? Why bring up tenure at all if you’re talking to kids?
It wasn’t Bill Gates who said it. But, it doesn’t matter. Whether it was him or someone else, whether he agrees with it or does not… it’s still worth unpacking. I realize that there were actually several important messages being delivered, and we should listen up: students should prepare for the future, tenure is a problem and job insecurity is the economic engine.
Preparing for the Future
The most obvious message, of course, is that American children are spoiled and need a wake up call. Gates, or rather FakeGates, is telling American children and their parents that it’s about time that the kids find out that life after childhood is no picnic. In this regard, FakeGates is just the Gates version of Tom Friedman , Bill Cosby and your mom. “Kids these days…” Of course, the modern take is mixed with real parental anxiety about the future ability of young adults to prosper in what continues to be a pernicious economic downturn for Main Street. Jobs keep going overseas or being automated; companies keep downsizing. How can parents insure that their children will be winners in a world where not everyone can get a job and where those lucky enough to have jobs find themselves juggling the jobs of two people in order to maintain the security of one? There aren’t enough jobs.
According to FakeGates, the solution to not enough jobs is hard work. If we toughen the kids up, they’ll have the edge to compete for those jobs. What, then, is the model for when all the kids are toughened up and ready for work in a world where there aren’t enough jobs? Perhaps before we nod our heads at the folly of youth and sell this vision of survival and success, we need to consider what FakeGates is also telling us. What is the premise of the threat? What is he saying about the work world? What is he saying about tenure?
Read part 2: Tenure