… No jobs for a mis-educated generation.
According to the Wall Street Journal, hundreds of thousands of new college graduates are entering a U.S. work force that has no use for them. While two million college grads remain unemployed, kids with $200k educations get to compete for jobs waiting and busing tables, delivering pizzas, serving as bouncers at night clubs and baristas at Starbucks. Those who’ve gone the distance to earn Ivy League law degrees may be joining other Ivy League law grads working as census takers, file clerks, and substitute teachers. Sorry class of 2010, nobody wants you.
If you’re a recent college grad, you’ve likely spent your entire academic life training to be irrelevant in our new economy. U.S. schooling has probably trained you to follow instructions (instead of blaze your own trail), engage in rote learning (instead of deep, thoughtful exploration), work for grades (instead of your true passions), develop a docile, domesticated disposition, a dependant on the “the system” for security and employment (instead of developing your own rugged individualism); and learning to avoid experimentation and risk, because straight “A” students are trained to think they need to “get it right” at least 90% of the time, (instead of learning to be comfortable taking big risks with the confidence that if you can just “get it right” 20% of the time in the real world, you’ll be among the most successful entrepreneurs, pioneers, innovators and creative risk-takers in the world. 9 out of 10 new businesses and creative ventures fail. Get a 2 out of 10 success rate in the real world and you win. Get 5 out of 10 right in school or as an industrial factory/knowledge worker and you still fail.) Bottom line is, school’s trained you to fail outside of anything but the artificial bubble of the American industrial age, which we have just watched collapse.
After all the hard work it took you to survive seventeen years of this archaic, industrial era academic system, you’re about to discover it was all a giant mistake. You’ve been trained to fail in the worst sense, because you’re not even failing at what you love to do – you’re failing at what you’ve been trained to think you should do. And the new global economy doesn’t give a rat about the promises you were made. “Get good grades, so you can go to a good college, so you can get a good job,” is yesterday’s news and it’s about as helpful as knowing yesterday’s lotto number.
This whole fiasco wasn’t malicious, but rather a consequence of a school system designed over a century ago, for what was necessary to drive last century’s industrializing economy. The U.S. school system was designed in Germany around the turn of the last century to fuel the industrial revolution. That’s where we got much of it from – even the name “kindergarten” (literally “child garden” – a place to grow kids.) The need then was for good factory workers and managers who did what they were told and followed procedures. So the school system wasn’t designed to foster free thinking, a pioneering spirit, innovation, or passion – in fact it was designed to snuff out those traits; it was designed to replace your natural inclinations, curiosities, and creativity with the compulsive desire to earn good grades and subordinate to the system. Instead of learning and working for passion, you were likely trained to learn and work for performance evaluations and your supervisor’s approval.
This worked on a national scale when graduates joined a massive workforce mobilized to build and man factories. In that era industrial citizens needed to be docile and easily trained to execute policies and procedures day in and day out without question or revolt. When industrialization was still the name of the game this approach ensured U.S. economic supremacy.
Back then two major realities of today didn’t exist: computers and telecommunication-driven global outsourcing. With these two factors squarely in place now, there’s either a computer or someone in India or China’s newly educated two billion person workforce who can perform the same tasks for which our school system trained you – and these new solutions offer corporations orders of magnitude greater efficiency than any U.S. grad. That is, unless you’re willing to work for $10k a year. If you are, then your U.S. education may still serve you well for years to come. If not, then you’ve been duped. Some of us have been warning about this for many years, but now it’s finally happened – with 17% unemployment for our latest generation of college graduates, their education is proving to be measurably and significantly irrelevant – epic fail.
American Ingenuity – Our Saving Grace
It turns out the U.S. still has an edge in one area – despite our public education system’s apparent determination to rid our brightest students of it – and that edge is American ingenuity. American ingenuity isn’t just folklore; it’s natural selection. For centuries America has attracted the most adventurous, innovative, pioneering people from every country on the planet. And these pioneering souls passed their pioneering genes on to us. Genes like the DRD4 7R, associated with a novelty-seeking, exploratory, pioneering mindset, have been shown to be over twice as prevalent in the U.S. as it is worldwide.
While the industrialization of America provided our high standard of living, we have paid the price for it with epidemic rates of addiction, depression, and anxiety disorders. This is because we as a population have forced ourselves to conform to a disposition that is literally antagonistic to our genetic temperament. We are natural born explorers, creative risk-takers, and pioneers who have been cooped up in industrial era classrooms for far too long. And this confinement (and subsequent sublimation of our creativity) has taken a toll on our mental health.
We Americans can only sustain our lifestyle if we focus on maintaining our edge as the seat of innovation and progress: not factory workers, not bureaucrats, and certainly not the kleptrocrats whom frustrated creative-risk-takers all-too-often become when they are taught to abandon the passions of their hearts and instead chase external validation. When these naturally creative risk-takers, deformed by our intolerant school system, are put in the role of bureaucrat, kleptocratic looting becomes their only “creative” outlet – and what they create is disaster and chaos – think Enron, Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, and BP to name an infamous few.
What are we to do?
If we want to recover from our industrial-sized hangover, we need to retool our idea of what education should be. (In fact our current educational system defies the very word education, because (as Russell Bishop once pointed out to me), educate comes from the Latin meaning “to draw out of,” which is the Socratic style of teaching, not “to put into,” which is the didactic style of teaching inflicted by our school system.) We need to offer the kind of real education promoted by the likes of Socrates, Plato, Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, Einstein, Edison, and Henry Ford. The kind enjoyed by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who both fell into unconventional educations that fostered inner direction, passion, creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, and freedom to take risks – lots of risks. This type of education is also the most effective for our most energetic and creative students. Right now these kids are being labeled ADHD and medicated to suppress their high energy, and fluid, creative temperaments; biochemically forcing bright creative children to conform to an antiquated idea of learning, which is tied to a sinking ship. These highly creative kids don’t have a disorder – our system does.
America needs to wake up. We need to help kids learn to be dynamic entrepreneurs, innovative inventors, and accomplished artists. That is what the new global economy may still be willing to pay American grads big $100k+ incomes for. We need to get back to the roots of American prosperity when the leaders of industry didn’t get paid fat salaries and juicy bonuses for manipulating the system and chop-shopping our infrastructure, but instead thought like true entrepreneurs who gain prosperity through courageous, resourceful, creative pioneering.
The ones who prosper in a new world of rapid innovation and constant upheaval are not the compliant, dependent, directionless students we’re churning out of our cog-in-the-wheel education system. Those who prosper in a new world are those cut from the same cloth as our great American heroes: the kind who could shoot from the hip, the kind who could think on their toes, the kind who were comfortable with risk and uncharted territory, the kind who could invent unthinkable things like the airplane, the integrated circuit, and the Internet.
If you’re graduating with the class of 2010, your best bet is not to wait and hope for industry to save the day, rescuing you from your jobless purgatory. Your best bet is to reconnect with your passion, your God-given brilliance, your American ingenuity, and go ahead and invent the industry that will save the day.
For more information on how to harness your natural creative risk-taking temperament visit ______.
Garret LoPorto, public speaker, inventor, and author of “The DaVinci Method: Break Out & Express Your Fire.”
June 8th, 2010
Why does it seem like the unique qualities of Olympic superstars are also the very symptoms of ADHD?
With the impulsive and “reckless” Bode Miller — who has been known to be easily distracted with partying and socializing — winning another Olympic gold medal, right on the heels of Shaun White’s hyperactive and rebellious display of loose-cannon greatness. It all may start to make you wonder if the qualities of impulsiveness, hyperactivity, “unnecessary” risk-taking, and rebellion — all normally associated with ADHD — may also be the keys to success for U.S. Olympic superstars. Michael Phelps speaks openly about his ADHD diagnosis; and it seems that instead of being something he had to overcome, his symptoms of ADHD, like abundant energy, restlessness and hyper-focus, may have given him a supernormal capacity to triumph as an Olympic athlete.
ADHD — long viewed as a disability — is proving itself to be quite an asset in the Olympic games. Hyperactivity, thrill-seeking, recklessness, hyper-focus, rebelliousness and impulsiveness — all primary “symptoms” of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are proving to provide the winning edge that gives an athlete supernormal abilities in competition. Seeing Shaun White nail his own out of the box invention “the Double McTwist 1260″ beating his already gold winning score, shows a temperament unlike the average competitor. Doesn’t the “Double McTwist 1260″ sound a lot like something an ADHD kid would get into trouble in gym class for coming up with and recklessly attempting?
Shaun White loves risk, loves to think different, loves to be a rebel, a troublemaker, a misfit, a trailblazer. These are all qualities of the ADHD temperament that are often disparaged by our public school systems. Yet these are the very qualities that make Americans great — that give us that competitive edge — that pioneering spirit — that supernormal ability to transcend the competition and bring our pursuits to a whole new level.
With it so clear that many classic symptoms of ADHD are actually assets for Olympic gold contenders, we might wonder what else these “symptoms” may be assets for … how about the risk-taking, hyperactivity and great impulses it take to be an entrepreneur, artist or inventor? So what is it that makes Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder a “disorder”? I argue that the disorder is in the context, not the person. People with ADHD don’t belong cooped up in classrooms being evaluated on how well they can sit still and do what they’re told. People with ADHD belong on the slopes, in the water, in the heat of competition, pioneering, exploring, and discovering new ways to transcend obstacles in the pursuit of greatness. That’s where the “disorder” becomes a gift.
So maybe it’s not impulsive, hyperactive kids that have the disorder after all — maybe it’s the society that has the disorder, because it bluntly insists on continuing to try to force these round pegs into its square holes. One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing again and again expecting different results. Kids with ADHD virtually never try the same approach twice when it doesn’t work the first time — but the society that has been making impulsive, creative, hyperactive kids’ lives in the classroom miserable for the last 50 years most certainly does.
The next time you see a child exhibit the “symptoms” of ADHD — maybe instead of being critical, seeing them as having a learning disability and possibly putting them on medication designed to strip them of these qualities – instead we could recognize the potential heroes these people really are – and help them restructure their lives (like the families of Bode Miller, Shaun White and Michael Phelp’s did) so that instead of being cooped up and frustrated in a little box of a classroom, they are liberated to soar with their compatriots in the thin air of top competition — be it in athletics, business, innovation or the arts.
To learn more about how ADHD can be transformed from a problem into a secret of success, go here.
February 24th, 2010
Q: “Hey Garret, I just started listening to your book the other day, and I have to say I feel like you wrote my biography… Totally amazing stuff. I know you are busy, so I really hope you can answer my question.
I want to stop taking Ritalin. I have been taking it for about 10 years. While it does help me focus and concentrate on some detail-oriented tasks, I sometimes feel that it turns me into someone I am not. I feel shy and introverted. I become content and comfortable with mediocrity, which is not the real me. It feels like Ritalin suppresses the qualities I love most and am most proud of in myself. I worry about my dependence on Ritalin.I just want to be me. I love the fact that I am unique in my DaVinci ways, and different from most of society.
Some days I feel so alive: Upbeat, funny, outgoing, and naturally high on life. I often feel this way when my medication wears off, or if I forget to take it. I want to feel like the ‘real’ me again all the time, and allow the Davinci part of me to shine through. I know that you are not a doctor, but could you advise me as a friend? How can I stop taking my stimulant medication after being on it for such a long time?”
My Answer: Great question… So, like you said, I am giving you this answer as a friend, not as a doctor. I would not recommend going off your stimulant medication ‘cold turkey,’ because chances are you’ve already built a life around the person you are while taking Ritalin. This Ritalin influenced person you’ve ‘become’ for the last 10 years is most likely a lot more organized and tame, but you are also less creative, sensitive, wild, and adventurous than you naturally are. Stopping the Ritalin all at once may cause massive disruption in your life.
For starters, I would recommend taking weekends off. Give yourself Friday afternoon through Sunday night away from the drugs. If you’re in college and you need to study, then take it Sunday night, but try to give yourself the whole weekend if it’s possible. These weekends off will help bring you back in touch with who you are or would like to be again. You can start building your new life during your weekends. Also, next time you have a vacation, take a vacation from your medication too. As you develop confidence in who you are and in your natural gifts, you’ll be able to make more fulfilling choices about what your “work week” should be about. Maybe you’ll discover you no longer want a career as a Ritalin driven engineer, but instead discover you would much rather pursue a life as an entrepreneur or a writer. These kinds of choices often require deep conviction to be successful and may take some time for you to develop, while still playing a part that is not really you. You may need your Ritalin to help keep your old life together until you’re ready for your big breakout.
February 17th, 2010
Q: “I find myself procrastinating a lot, because it’s difficult for me to put ideas together on paper. Classmates seem annoyed when I ask them for help. How can I outsource or delegate stuff I’m not good at in this situation?”
My Answer: When it comes to school, most DaVinci’s best shot at delegating or “outsourcing” the organizational responsibilities that conflict with your temperament is to play the “disability” card. (Let’s face it; most schools are not going to accommodate you if you say you are a DaVinci with a unique brilliance that comes along with some organizational weakness. You’ll need to have proof of a diagnosed disability to get the support you deserve.) Here, in the US, the National Disabilities Act grants students with a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD the right to free executive support from their schools. Executive function support can include note takers, organizational assistance, extra time on projects and tests, oral exams when writing is too difficult, etc. Virtually every DaVinci can get an ADD or ADHD diagnosis if they choose to. You can use this diagnosis to turn the tables on your school and insist that any school requirements, which conflict with your temperament, or ‘disability,’ now are the school’s responsibility to make accessible for you.
February 17th, 2010
Q: “I keep hearing people referring to themselves or others as ‘DaVincis.’ What does that mean?”
My Answer: In my book, The DaVinci ,I define a “DaVinci” as someone who is impulsive, distractible, sensation-seeking and creative. Think of “DaVinci” as a personality type – or more accurately a natural temperament some people have. People who are DaVincis tend to be labeled as “troublemakers” or “space-cadets,” tend to be diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, bipolar, OCD, autism or Aspergers and tend to suffer from anxiety, depression, instability and addictions. Just about all DaVincis have the natural capacity to tap savant-like abilities if they can unlearn certain limits they may have been forced to accept growing up in a society intolerant to mavericks, change-agents and nonconformists. Depending on their talents and interests DaVincis tend to make great innovators, artists, athletes, emergency workers, performers and entrepreneurs. You can learn more about DaVincis, what makes them tick, how to overcome the weaknesses that come with this temperament and how to set up your life to thrive as a DaVinci – in my book The DaVinci Method. You can find out more here: www.DaVinciMethod.com
February 17th, 2010
Can you source the stat saying that 10% of people have the DaVinci personality?
Thanks,
Stacy
The 10% of people have the DaVinci personality is a conservative estimate based on the entire world population. This estimate is much higher in the U.S., probably closer to 25%.
In a recent Mayo Clinic study, the lowest and most conservative estimate was that ADHD had an occurrence rate of 7.5%. There is a well established connection between the gene DRD4 7R and ADHD. The DRD4 7R has a global occurrence rate of about 20%. We presume this gene is not active in all of its carriers and thus put forth a conservative estimate that 10% of the world population has an activated DRD4 R7 gene which leads to an impulsive (creative), risk-taking, sensation seeking (distractible), disposition. We call this disposition the “DaVinci” temperament.
What is also interesting to note is that the U.S. population has been shown to have a much higher rate of the genetic DRD4 7R occurrence at 48.3%! That means that in America, 25% of the population is likely to have some form of the DaVinci temperament trait. Meanwhile there can be places in the U.S. with abnormally high concentrations of this DaVinci trait. USA Today reported a certain school district in Virginias had 63% of its students diagnosed ADHD.
Source: Mayo Clinic
Posted: March 20, 2002
A 2002 Mayo Clinic study found that the lowest and most conservative estimate of AD/HD occurrence among the study subjects was 7.5 percent by age 19, based on research criteria for AD/HD.
“Association of the 7-repeat allele of the D4 dopamine receptor (DRD4) exon 3 polymorphism with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is well-established.” Neuropsychopharmacol Hung. 2005 Sep;7(3):125-31.
“DRD4 [is] significantly associated to ADHD according to the present meta-analysis, confirming previous ones.”
Encephale. 2005 Jul-Aug;31(4 Pt 1):437-47.
Meta-analysis of candidate genes in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
CHU Robert-Debre (AP-HP, Paris VII), 75019 Paris.
The gene DRD4 7R allele has been shown to lead to impulsiveness, sensation seeking (distractibility), and risk-taking behavior. This gene’s frequency has been said to “differ considerably among … different populations.” The 7-repeat allele had a global mean = 20.6%, appearing quite frequently in the Americas (mean frequency = 48.3%) but only occasionally in East and South Asia (mean frequency = 1.9%).
1996 Jul;98(1):91-101. Department of Genetics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520-8005, USA
April 18th, 2006
