George Will's Article in the Longview News- Journal - Thursday July 6, 2017 titled The sequence to success should be a wake-up call to all our high school and college students.  The article is long and has a number of references to prestigious research institutions that indicate there is a pattern connected to reaching that goal of "Success".
   How do today's adults define success?  According to Will's article today's young adults define success as - insurance against poverty. And the recipe or sequence to the success pattern according to information from the Brookings Institution is:

•        First get at least a high school diploma

•        Then get a job. 

•         Then get married

•         Only then have children                     

    The above steps should be taken in that order. The formula is not a sure thing, however. Yet Wills quotes Wang and Wilcox research of couples ages 28 to 34 and found that "only 3 per cent of those who followed this sequence are poor." That means 97 percent were experiencing 'success.' I'll take those odds any day of the week.
      I keep remembering what someone told me years ago.  "The choices you make today affect the rest of your life."  George Will's article, "The Sequence to success," is well worth your time to dig out and read top to bottom.

In reviewing some of my clippings I found the information below and want to share it with everyone interested in our children's and grandchildren's education. I especially like the reference to Rip Van Winkle.  If you are interested in this book, Becoming Brilliant ,you can see and purchase it from Amazon



Becoming Brilliant by

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff  and Kathy HirshPasek

Golinkoff: We live in a crazy time, and parents are very worried about their children's futures. They're getting all kinds of messages about children having to score at the top level on some test. The irony is, kids could score at the top and still not succeed at finding great employment or becoming a great person.
Hirsh-Pasek: If Rip Van Winkle came back, there's only one institution he would recognize: "Oh! That's a school. Kids are still sitting in rows, still listening to the font of wisdom at the front of the classroom."
We're training kids to do what computers do, which is spit back facts. And computers are always going to be better than human beings at that. But what they're not going to be better at is being social, navigating relationships, being citizens in a community. So we need to change the whole definition of what success in school, and out of school, means.