If You Want to be Rich and Happy, Don’t Go to School Summary - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Education’s Biggest Mistake

1.      The mistakes of current education system:

a.       It leads kids to care more about grades than they do about learning.

b.      It rewards right answers and penalizes us for making mistakes (i.e., which teach us being right is more important than learning what you don’t know).

c.       Students are not taught how to learn from mistakes. They are conditioned to believe mistakes are bad. Later in life, they would avoid mistakes at all costs, which may make them looking good; but they sure aren’t going anywhere.

d.      In real learning however, mistakes are essential – as learning is accomplished through trial and error (i.e., it is a process of making mistakes, finding out what you don’t know and correcting).

e.       Students are driven not by the excitement of learning but the fear of being wrong.

f.       Education had become a boring, fear-driven process that deadens minds.

g.      To punish people for making mistakes actually prevents them from gaining knowledge.

h.      However, in reality, avoiding mistakes makes us stupid, and having to be right all the time make us obsolete. 

i.        Thus, knowing how to make mistakes may well be one of the most valuable lessons we can learn for traveling the road to success.

2.      Ask yourself this: “What dreams of mine have gone unfulfilled because I was afraid of failing?” And then get ready to change all that, recognizing that a life of unfulfilled dreams is hardly worth living. 

Chapter 3: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?