So, you’re in high school and you want to be a general contractor one day. You have big dreams and school is stupid. I’ll never use this stuff they teach. Think again.
First off, let me say that we have all heard of the guy or gal who dropped out in the third grade and became rich and hates those smart people. Why Abraham Lincoln only had one year of formal schooling.
Yes, these people exist; but most of these people self-educated themselves because they had drive. Lincoln devoured books. And most of the self-made people without formal education don’t have contempt for education, or they wouldn’t send their kids to prep schools and the best colleges.
Too, show me a person who says that I went to school and never used algebra later, and I will show you someone who has not thought the matter out. In fact, even a Shakespeare class is important. Why?
School when done right is to teach you to use your mind independently and to see through bad logic (like a bad business scheme). You don’t read Shakespeare in school so that you can discuss him over lunch one day at your lawyer or accountant job which no contractor would want. You read him and then have a good teacher make you think out his plots so that you can expand your cognitive processes.
These processes are what make a person smart. The self-taught who don’t have schooling often have these, but they learned them the hard way, by life’s kicks and punches. In books, you can learn this without the bruises.
Too, if you learn these things well, you expand your creativity. Art class isn’t stupid to a person who may paint any kind of structure. Any slob can throw paint on to a wall; it takes an artist to do it well.
As far as I before mentioned, you’ll use math on a contractor job, and the math will many times be complicated. Try to calculate the shingles for a hip roof (a contractor term, it does not mean groovy) without geometry. Without math, try to figure out the amount of plywood you need, the amount of 2 by 4’s… you get the picture.
Even Phys. Ed is important. The reason for the class isn’t so that you can learn the proper way to do pushups. It’s for your general health because health for life is often determined by your health in your youth. You pay for the sins of your youth in your 40’s and 50’s, not at 25. Why do you think your Mom and Dad are square? Even if a person is as pure as snow at 16, your body breaks down with age. You can’t do what a 20 year does. But with bad health at 16, your health at 50 may be much worse. And worse health at 50 means a contractor isn’t making money.
So your Health class is important. Bad teeth; for instance, will take 10 years off your life. Good dental hygiene is taught in Health class. Your teeth are also linked closely to other health concerns. And bad health again is terrible for a contractor. So maybe you should listen in Health class.
To conclude, the Romans who had a civilization that lasted from 700 B.C. until 1453 A.D. in its Eastern Empire would have never cut Art, Music or Physical Education from a school budget.
And all these are affordable as the problems with school costs are bad contracts, not programs. For instance, many school contracts will make a school buy health insurance for employees that costs three times as much as private sector policies that cover the same things. So, to learn the things that are cut from school budgets, now some students have to be self-taught. The circle completes in a bad way.
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