You do not have to go for your full potential

Recently there has been a scandal where a number of parents have been charged with over-coaching and bribing of school officials even using private firms specializing in bending the educational system over its boundaries.

There have always been educational consultants and their work has always been controversial. A lot of them gets kickbacks from wilderness program, residential treatment programs and prison-like boarding schools. The educational consultants the parents involved in this scandal used, took another approach. They faked papers, so the children looked like super-athletes. They got forehand notice of tests, so they could target the coaching, so the children passed exams easily.

The worst part is that the children properly could have lived good lives. Being a youtuber and influencer has little to do with which school you attend while you are building your business. The local university or even a daytime job at a burger-joint enjoying a McJob career going nowhere does not matter, if it is what makes you happy.
I say to my children “I do not care what you want to do in your adult life if you do not become a drug dealer or parking attendant.”

Still I find myself paying DKK 20,000 to a super-expert in a math. Program called Maple and in couching my child into the area of geometry and trigonometry. Am I then not preaching double standard?

No. Because it was not my decision to enter the school. It was the choice of my child. It was the recommendation from the teachers in the elementary school that my child could excel even he had 12 to 14 math. Teachers during his first 9 years of schooling because the Danish parliament decided to destroy the free public schooling in Denmark and motivate rich parents to pay for private school. In just one year, 70 percent of the teachers quit because being a teacher could no longer support a normal life. The teachers simply retired if they had the option or moved to other lines of business. My child suffered as result of the governments decision. There are areas where the teaching simply did not stick.

But once again. My child decided to attend the school – not me. My child was ready to do the work it took. But the skills lacked and while I make it certain that quitting school will not be a disappointment to me, I also bought a few hours of private teaching just to see if it would work having private lessons once per week. It did! We are back on the right track. It might not be the best high school exam, my child will earn, but it is a goal achieved and even if my child after passing high school will not attend further schooling and start a McJob career flipping burgers until retirement, I will not be disappointed.

I have another child looking into which university to attend. Whether my child will go down that path or not, is not for me to decide. I will accept whatever decision. I am a Dane born in the 1960’s. I have learned that hard work doesn’t necessary pay.

• The government will cut early retirement regardless of how hard you work.
• The government will punish you by removing your civil rights if you choose to work abroad so you never can return to Denmark.
• The government will destroy your children’s schooling despite how much taxes your hard work brings to their table.
• The government will force you to pay for the cure of your children’s if it a mental (and in Denmark shameful) illness despite how hard you work paying 50 percent or more of your income in taxes.

So, my children shall not see hard work as a thing, they should be proud of. They shall work hard if they like it, not because they should expect some kind of bonus or thanks for it.

In the end it is what they want, not what I want.

That is why I see parents as plain out stupid if they force their children into wilderness programs, special boarding schools, treatment centers etc. just because they as parents feel that their children do not aim to fulfill their full potential.

That is why I see parents as plain out stupid if they bribe people to let their children attend universities when all the child wants is to party at a local school instead.

None will put up a monument once you are gone for pushing your children to do more that they want. All you achieve instead is to push them away from you.

Remember that. You only get one chance as a parent to do it right.

Sources:

• 2019 college admissions bribery scandal (Wikipedia)
• One in 10 teachers at Danish public schools does not have teacher education (The Copenhagen Post)
• Experience: I paid to have my daughter kidnapped (The Guardian)

Some line of businesses you must never choose

Imagine you are a teenager again or you stand in front of your children and they ask when line of business, they should aim at.

One good advice is not to go into the IT-business.

Few lines of businesses fail their employees like the IT-business do.

In many firms, people are trained to perform certain task in various software product and when new generations replace the old ones, they are failed because younger people without the burden of having to feed children and partner. There are so many people who believed that they should be allowed to serve the rest of their lives changing backup-tapes or put up hardware for office-employees only to discover that the task has been outsourced to some kind of firm based in the Eastern part of Europe or India where they get low-paid employees in without security clearance who settle sleeping in unheated houses.

Tons of +50 years with experience in hardware or in software products who had their peak in the 1990’s or 2000’s like Microsoft Dynamics C5 and XAL are either out of the business or employed in low-paid jobs where they only have the choice to wait for retirement. In Denmark it is maybe 10-20 years they have to wait while they fight falling victims to the job-training system where some employers together with some social social workers run their shady business hiring people in for their unemployment benefits which enable the employers to crash the market because they do not have to pay full salary like their competitors.

A career in the IT-business often resembles a McJob career where you earn good money fast but then you are stuck and going nowhere until you are failed by the business.

I got a comment to an old post which you can read below. A firm called CSC at the time tried to kick out normal paid employers to replace them with people on lower pay combined with people collected in India.

People who faithfully served their firm only doing what they were asked to do were kicked out on the street because other people believed they were paid too much. What can be learned by all this? That there is no loyalty! That going to work every day does not count!

Life is not fair!

But you are the result of your own choosing. You could have aimed lower. You could have spoken out against immigration, outsourcing and missing taxes on web-based services sooner.

Look out on the world. Find some random people abroad who seems to enjoy themselves. Find their weaknesses. Hit on it. See to that the social stability in their society is destroyed. Time has come to hit back and hit back hard.

Source:
When a firm disowns its own image – Part I