To learn or not to learn — that is the question

When billionaire Richard Branson was 4 years old, his mother drove him outside London and asked him if he could find his way home. He said he thought so, and she said to get out and do it. Eight or nine hours later, he found his way home. Branson said that after that, nothing ever seemed difficult the rest of his life. A high school dropout and never having gone to college, Branson was a millionaire by age 19. Forbes estimates he’s worth $4 billion today.

What about 33 other billionaire dropouts? What were their early experiences driving their success? People like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Ray Kroc and Steve Jobs are all college dropouts. Not to mention Albert Einstein, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain and at least five U.S. presidents. They were people thinking for themselves, not memorizing school lessons. Mark Twain wrote, "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

When 25,000 to 35,000 kids, many with 4.0 grade point averages, apply to Harvard or Princeton, why are some accepted over others? According to New York Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto, Harvard and Princeton look at their hobbies. What do the students do in their free time when they have a choice to do whatever they want? No college or university looks at SAT scores, Gatto was told, as a determinant of future success. Test scores just tell how well you can memorize answers, not how well you can comprehend the meanings of questions and answers.

I worked in a real estate office with two other brokers who got 100 percent on every test they took, and they even offered me the answers. In two years, neither broker made a single sale. But they aced every test.

Horseback riding as a hobby rates extremely high at Ivy League colleges. Get on a 1,500 pound horse and if you don’t know what you’re doing on a trail, you can be decapitated by a tree branch, as nearly happened to my riding friend when we were in seventh grade. If a horse rolls over on you, or tramples you as happened to my brother, it can scare the heck out of you, or worse.

Sailing also can test one’s mettle. In eighth grade, I was invited with about 50 other kids to race in 8- to 18-foot-long Sabots, Stars and 110s from the San Diego Yacht Club to Coronado for an overnight event. I was a bailer, the lone crewman on a tiny boat for my 15-year-old captain. Some of the kids that were the children of club members often sailed alone out to the Coronado Islands, off the coast of Mexico. I tried it on my own once only to be captured but 100 yards away by the boat owner and returned to the dock. I never knew if he was more concerned about me or his boat.

Do public schools teach kids to think, or do they merely homogenize, mold and manipulate them? We know what schools claim to teach, but do they? In the California Teachers Association’s mission statement, only one goal out of 13 mentions students. The mission statements for the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers do not mention students even once. It brings to mind Albert Shanker, quoted in The Atlantic Monthly, who famously said, “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.”

I was never accepted at Harvard or Princeton because riding and sailing were never my hobbies, and besides, I never applied. Harvard last year only took two of every 10 valedictorians. For universities, solo hobbies involving danger can be a determinant of future dedication, initiative and persistence. Test scores are no substitute for improvising or adapting to challenging circumstances. No CEO has ever been hired because of SAT scores.

Public schools by design keep kids from thinking. School removes volition and individuality but doesn’t let the kids know. Instead, they tell them it’s the SAT scores and highest GPAs that count. They cram them full of information to memorize and don’t let them analyze or contemplate what they’re reading. The constant lament that “our schools are failing” translates to an unlimited demand for more money. In all your life, in all the things you have ever bought or sold, have you ever asked someone their SAT scores?

Gatto writes that in the early American colonies and up to World War I in Britain, a person could be put in prison for teaching “ordinary” people in public schools the “active literacies,” such as writing or speaking, because both cause a person to think. People who think for themselves are not very malleable or obedient as a rule. The “passive literacy” of reading was encouraged because future worker bees need to be able to follow instructions. It’s amazing how much elite boarding and “prep schools” today stress active literacies. Their students must read and communicate well to give direction to the Wal-Mart, McDonald’s or factory workers. Those workers are dependent upon corporate institutions for their incomes and self-esteem.

Johann Fichte said it was necessary to set up a system of universal forced schooling in which we destroy the imagination. Bells, ordered lessons, constant testing, ranking, etc. The intention is to artificially extend childhood. People who think for themselves and have a critical mind don’t like to follow military orders and tend not to want to work for other people, work in large homogenized corporations or in factories. Where will all the worker bees come from if they’re taught to think and create? To be blunt, intellectuals and corporate institutions need dumb people — and schools ensure the supply by making kids dumb. Not all public school children are dumbed down of course, but without question, millions are.

Potentially creative people are more likely to put businesses out of business. Creativity put Kodak out of business. Underwood typewriters used to be among the largest corporations in America.

Ghetto kids can learn just as well as aristocratic children, Adam Smith recognized, if that is the goal. Gatto writes: "After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt, and we suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves."

Schnaubelt, president of Citizens for Private Property Rights, has been a commercial real estate broker for 35 years and was a San Diego city councilman from 1977 to 1981.