OT: Calling all straight F students..., Don't ever give up Options

[BigD9146gt]

I was never good at homework. I liked being in school learning, just never could remember any of it when the time came to barf it back to the teacher. This is an email my old man sent me, he's a pretty sucessful mechanical engineer who also didn't do all that well in school. Enjoy.

Charles Kettering invented no knock self-starter, diesel locomotive and paint for cars.

Intelligent Ignorance:

The more education you have the less likely you are to become an inventor. The reason why is this: from the time a kid starts Kindergarten to the time he graduates from college, he will be examined two or three times a year and if he flunks once, he’s out. Now an inventor fails 999 times and if he succeeds once, he’s in. An inventor treats his failures simply as practice shots.

He believed a problem was more than willing to be solved provided the researcher remembered who was boss, by which he meant the problem, not himself. The only difference between a problem and a solution, he used to say, is that people understand the solution. Solutions only involve a change in perception, since the solution must have existed all along with the problem itself. A researcher, he argued, was there not to master the problem but to make it give birth to its solution.

[MattR]

To reply to this thread I do have to say I dont agree with modern education. So much emphasis is placed on being "well rounded" (as if school can physically teach that anyway), students now days are discouraged from exploring their calling and encouraged to enter a world of rote memorization of crap you dont need to know. This is mostely aimed toward high school, but some of it applies to college classes.
Now, take the inventors of yesteryear. Their schooling wasnt too intensive, or they didnt do well, so they read their own books and were still motivated to learn. Now days students are so burnt out on school we dont want to do anything other then go home and watch tv (or 914club) when we get home. My highschool was classes from 8am until 3pm then on average (good students spent) 4-5 hours a night doing homework. Now tell me where we're supposed to find the time or energy to go read the same books an inventor in the 19th century would have read?
In addition the education system nowdays tries to mask itself as the solution for students. Whats tough to differentiate is that school is only one tool used. If you do well in school you are gaurenteed NOTHING in life. In fact many universities (including top ranked ones like UCI) have little to no job placement programs and do not work with local companies. But I am not going to drop out because simply I would rather have the "tool" of education in my belt. Some disagree.

You can probably tell Ive had a lot to think about while not doing my homework. I am not a straight A student, but also not an F student. I try hard, but not too hard.