>> the young people we can find in schools today, declared the continent when it was still willed and whipped the greatest military power on earth.

most of the revolutionary army including its officer corps were teenagers, the marquis de lafayette was 17, and alexander hamilton, a colonel, was 19. george washington was the old man of the revolution at 42. they whipped the greatest while terry power on earth not once but twice and drove out the french and spanish, invented novel technologies, built roads, canals, cities, sold ice to far away india and spread open source creativity over every aspect of american culture. a major reason they were able to produce so many miracles from the six-shooter to the steamboat, to manned flight, was they weren't weakened by the

phony concept of adolescence for which there is not a scrap of scientific evidence or by any artificial extension of childhood through forced schooling. early american society celebrated accomplishment as any frontier society must before the politicians and the schemers concluded -- colluded to build managers for themselves and the economy prior to the civil war was dominated by independent livelihoods. as abraham lincoln told me wisconsin agricultural association, in 1859, it had room for any one of energy and ideas whether they lived in a mud shack or behind brass

knockered doors. foreign visitors were dazzled by the energy released by a society so revolutionarily egalitarian, and which makes them all learning from one another. the civil war changed everything, in the northern industrial state which emerged in its wake, entrepreneurialism was unwelcome. factories and finance came to rule the roost when that transformation, people with minds of their own, became troublesome, to management,... to follow orders or from a management perspective, best kept childish, childish people at bay. children make the best customers. they have no sales resistance.

since plato, a long string of you tone yep thinkers has worked to supply society's managers with algorithms, which lead to childish lives. they all begin with wiping the slate as clean as possible of close emotional ties to family, to religion and so on. all these things interfere with the authority of managers and no law is more dangerous than self-respect in independent minds and characters, which open source learning virtually guarantee. that is why schools function as they do, as environments actively hostile to open source strategy, the ability to serve different purposes. i think at this point, i'm going to give you -- i can -- like a 7

minute break and i'm going to sit here and just rest my voice. because we're getting to the good part! [laughter]. [applause]. >> i call this section the honor roll. and part of it -- one or two of the names you have heard. craig venture, the beach bum, instrumental in giving the world the first map of the human genome, was born in 1946. school board... out of his mine and a fancy punished by driving his teachers crazy and staggered through junior high school,

staggered out of school into a buck private -- into vietnam where he became a medical corpsman and there he learned to despise bureaucracy and got the shock of his life with heads and hands laying all over the place and that shocked him into a solidly responsible life. his book "a life decoded" has only been out a couple of months and is certainly worth reading. franklin delano roosevelt had a c-average in high school. and a c-average in college. john f. kennedy had a c-average in high school, and a c-average in college, the next one won't surprise you, george w. bush had a c-average in high school, and a c-average in college, but this

might surprise you. bush's c-average was one point higher than senator john kerry's c-average! [laughter]. >> al gore flunk gd out of his first college. and squeaked through his second. with a c-minus average. dick cheney the famous vice president flunked out, too. when his sat scores in language and math are added together, the legendary progressive senator paul wellstone scored 800 as a total. now, it is true that in his day, the match was only 1600 and now i believe it is 2400, still that is a 50 and america's global computer dominance rose as i told you from men without college degrees.

ted turner, founder of the worldwide news service cnn, dropped out of -- dropped out freshman year and william faulkener, one of our nobel prize authors got a d in english in his freshman year in college. and, dropped out, then and there, never to return, warren avis who pioneered auto renlsz at airports considered college but decided against it as a waste of time and money. and ed hamiltonings the nation's largest independent mail-order book dealer told me the time and money he saved by not going to college gave him a real head start over his competition, and was the foundation of his eventual success. sean fanning, whose in invention

of napster at age 18 almost ruined the multi-billion dollar music industry and was hired by the industry at age 24, in 2007 to come up with a plan to save it. and sean has no college, and told the paper that i read the interview in, he has no plans to get any college. lou washer man, who, more than anyone else created modern hollywood, with his colossal mca talent agency, had no college and almost no attendance in high school. although he has a high school diploma. he preferred instead to work full-time as a movie usher, beginning at age 13, so how did he get dis diploma working as a movie usher? in an interesting fashion. he approached the school principal with a deal the

administrator could not refuse. in exchange for a diploma, but he wouldn't attend classes, wasserman smuggled first run films out of the theatre, in the morning, before it opened, took them to the high school, where they were screened for an admissions price, got them back to the theater, before it opened, and the schools would use the money earned to buy band instruments, and uniforms, so the principal looked like a hero. to parents. he used the time saved from copying notes off black boards to set up mca, signing stars when he was still a teenager like fred astaire and the gish sisters to long term contracts. the legal instruments he created as a teenage boy were -- with no legal training at all are still used, as models in law school

today for show business litigation. and if that seems farfetched to any of you, just remember shen went wong and the phoenix steel plants in germany and marilee jones in the mit admissions office. warren buffett as again i spook the world's richest man, began in business at the age of 6, selling ice-cold coca-cola and chewing gum door-to-door in depression-era omaha. that is age 6, by stages he added other businesses to his strain, he sold retrieved golf balls in bulk to the club pro shop. he sifteded the discarded racetrack betting tickets in bulk, searching for winners, accidentally thrown away. he set up a mass production

newspaper delivery operation in which he personally could deliver 1500 papers. he rented pinball machines to barber shops and split the take 50/50. and this is all before warren was 15. from the age of 13 he supported himself completely. and by age 18, he had the present-day equivalent of 100 grand in the bank. when the wharton business school turned him down for admission. [laughter]. >> schools don't even hint at the existence of some a road to self-sufficiency. imagine if 60 million trapped schoolchildren were set to actively imaginening personal ways to add value to the general

community. just like buffett did at their age. suppose from kindergarten boys and girls were needed with examples of how opportunity can be developed and managed. wouldn't our country be crowded with buffetts and ventures and fannings and wassermans, even mozarts, isn't that what this nation needs, not more zom buy, not more parasites, it isn't wild speculation, what is done is to carry your imagination back to the colonial days in ben franklin's america, where the possibilities were not created by task force of experts but by everybody getting a chance at a term, just as soon as they felt

able. in an environment where possibilities were everywhere. [applause]. >> now, i want to tell you about a city that actually exists and i know a lot of you passed through amsterdam, take a couple hours off and rent a car and go to drachten, the dutch city of drachten had an immense traffic problem. it took hours to get through the small place. lots of accidents occurred, and the motorists got caught under the car and i see someone laughing who knows the story of

drachten. what drachten did after discussing the many genius ways of putting up signs to discipline parking and motoring through town, was simply to go in the opposite direction. it did away with all traffic signs, all parking meters, and even parking spaces. the result so far is -- has been shocking. traffic safety has improved dramatically. speed of transit is five times faster than it had been with all of the police and the regulations and the signs and the flashing lights. under some circumstances, it seems, people will take it upon themselves to look out for their own and other people's best interests. i got that from a book called, "the future of the internet."

jonathan citrain is the offer. now i would like to refresh your memory about st. paul's letters to the new congregations that one day were to become the christian movement. but at the beginning were just widely scattered groups that didn't know one another. and they were looking for a set of rules to follow, and paul traveled with the convey yansz of the day, between these far scattered little places, and he brought a message to them and the message even after all these years is shocking and i seldom meet religious people who swear by the bible and have read this many times who actually heard what paul was saying. st. paul's new testament letters

to the congregation which later became the christian movement are filled with fervent calls to ignore the rules. i swear that's true. rules paul said, corrupted the establishment of his day and in a variety of ways. paul writes, salvation will not be found through obeying the rules. think of a surfing bum, cracking the human genetic code, or a movie usher giving shape to the american film industry. as examples of this. screen the religious don't from paul and you are left with the school problem of our day. a conflict between those whose status and income depends on keeping things pretty much as they are, think of the testing industry, for example and an

insur agency motivated by a different logic. make up the rules as you go along, paul said. and -- in different words, adapt to local conditions, and as long as you remain true, to the root christian principle of loving your neighbor, as much as you love yourself, things will work out, whatever you do. the political establishment of paul's day like the school establishment of our own, had a recipe for everything. it was pledged to certainties. you find a thief, you cut off his nose. you find an adult truss, you stone her to death. when in doubt, don't think, just follow the rules. but the new insurgency traveled a different road, which most people can't understand today. even people who believe they are good christians. what the new insurgency said, if

somebody steals your coat, give him your cloak. if somebody hits you, on the left side of your face, turn the right side. too be hit as well. pay the working men who labor only for the afternoon the same wage as those who work from early sunrise. rule book people find these pronouncements incomprehensible. in our day, a majority of americans have been trivialized and disenfranchised by the algorithms of schools, colleges and corporations. three heads on the same snake. in spite of the all-pervasive sway of these command and control form lie, of -- foreman formula, a powerful insurgency is springing forth. so far, without organizing very

much the internet organized insurgency is jep -- has jeopardized huge commercial operations in music, in film, broke in the security of banks, and government installations, and stolen tens of millions of i'd tis, one every three seconds. it appears to be aiming to upset the whole notion of patents and copyrights. as china is already done. [applause]. >> as china has already upset that notion of patents by stealing from anyone they want to steal from, without paying any penalties for their robberies. the formulas for powerful weapons like the peroxide paint remover and drain cleaner bomb which paralyzed london, a few years ago, circulate widely and

they are in every hardware store in the country for about -- for about $50, i tell them, i tell anti--- i tell audiences we better get rid of hydrogen peroxide first and drain cleaner because it makes a much bigger bang. [laughter]. >> and, what we have learned, i think, from iraq and afghanistan -- and i'm not defending and taking sides in any of this. just saying the lessons are clear. what we have learned from iraq and afghanistan and what we should have learned from vietnam, is that ordinary people whose lives are driven by principle, whether you agree with the principle or the not is irrelevant, refuse to be intimidated by overwhelming military forces. they cannot be conquered. the day of the expert and privileged information seems almost over.

this is a time of the sweat bath, of oceans boiling over. of underground explosions. of the planet world away, of extermination sure to follow, i'm quoting the poet, my french isn't all that good. and in the sweat bath you want next to your side, watching your back, a-students or walk-about graduates like richard branson. will you hire vol dick torrians or surf bum, and we need far less professional zashgs which is the kind of social hardening of the arteries, not more, we need to deal the young in on every new design as partners, not as human resources. we need a quality of human interconnection, suggested by youtube and my space and

facebook. we need to use school to discover new knowledge, not to exclusively memorize the old dead value to the communities, righted now, not in the future. thank you very much for this time. [applause] [applause]. >> if you have -- we have time to ask questions. are you going to run this. >> sure. we have 15 minutes, so -- go ahead. >> what would you say to someone --... the people you have given the example of where the exceptions to the rule. >> the question is, what would i say to the people who are often

-- who say these people are exceptions to the rules? well, what i would say, first of all, is that i taught in a manhattan junior high school for 30 years. and 15 years of that time i assembled a hodgepodge of a class, and i set them to doing extraordinary things. this is one class newspaper, all these things are going on simultaneously, some are being done by flunkouts, some by c-students, look at a few of these. here's a successful lawsuit, on page by a c-student. at the very same time, my kids are getting more new registrations than the entire democratic party on the west

side of manhattan. they work for -- worked for a month and we cut school for two days and topped their total. here's a girl on page 2, who ended up winning an all expenses paid ph.d. at some california university, who is castigating the central board of education for not teaching entrepreneurialism. where did she get the idea to do that? she came to me and said that her mother was a liar, and her mother said, she could go to paris, if she could raise this money to support herself over there, the girl is 13, mind you and she said, no 13-year-old can raise that money, and i said, not with and after-school job. that is a small amount of money for a business, i said why don't you set up a business? and she was a 13-year-old, can't sets up a business. i said, if we'll wanted to buy your product they don't care how

old you are and i taught her, cut school for a week and he came back with the idea of making one of a kind gifts using the ladies in old age homes who are paying 4 or $5,000 a month, using them to make one of a kind art gifts, sweater, scarf-hat combination and took the lady's picture and did her bayo and sold them to rich girls the at barnard college, for top dollar. and -- and made plenty of money, she made much more money than she sneaded, i said why don't you take your mother to paris. she might appreciate it. here is -- well, go through the papers. this is 30 days of work and has gone on year after year and i came to see the bull curve is some sort of an artifact in the

way we do business. genius and talent, are as cheap as the air we breathe and you think that is an impossibly romantic thing to say but i was one of the founders of the conservative party in new york state and i cass a parties officer, for 20 years and i can't be accused of wild romanticism, can i? anyway, another question, please. >> yes, ma'am? >> i do have a question, about a graph i have seen, that separates iq and educational level. as predictors of earning power later in life. do you know the graph i'm talking about? how would you explain that, simply discrimination by employers dragging down the average for people without high school diplomas, or what is it

that is going on there. >> i really wish we had a couple of hours... not en is that an intelligent question but this one i gave short shrift to should have gotten a half-hour. there are forces at work that the conscious rational mind is unaware of. let me give you an example of one of those forces. you doubtless have taken standardized reading tests, correct? and yet, i could give you a simple reading test that if you did well on the standardized test, you would fail. i would ask you to read the first 20 pages of an extremely simple famous novel." all quiet on the western front." and i would ask you three questions. which over 15 years of administering this test, i never found a kid who scored off the top of the reading scale to be

able to answer even -- finally in desperation i gave it as an open book test and in order to derive some explanation of what was going on, it suddenly dawned on me. that the better class of test reader figures out very quickly, maybe in third grade, what type of information is going to be tested and then when you read you deliberately, without realizing it, screen out all the stuff that is not going to be asked as a question. because you have a good sense of pattern, as a consequence, i could make a whole test up, out of information that is not typically asked. for example, in the first scene of the book, the german military unit the at a field kitchen