The Instapundit links to this address that was supposed te delivered to some High School in America. There has also been quite a bit of /. discussion on it. I strongly suggest that you READ THE WHOLE THING so all I want to do here is highlight some excellent advice, advice that doesn't just apply to inky schoolboys and girls.
This, although rather cynical, looks like excellent advice:
I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right.
This is also excellent advice, but less cynical:
Flying a glider is a good metaphor here. Because a glider doesn't have an engine, you can't fly into the wind without losing a lot of altitude. If you let yourself get far downwind of good places to land, your options narrow uncomfortably. As a rule you want to stay upwind. So I propose that as a replacement for "don't give up on your dreams." Stay upwind.
This one probably doesn't go over terribly well but its true:
I'm not saying you shouldn't hang out with your friends-- that you should all become humorless little robots who do nothing but work. Hanging out with friends is like chocolate cake. You enjoy it more if you eat it occasionally than if you eat nothing but chocolate cake for every meal. No matter how much you like chocolate cake, you'll be pretty queasy after the third meal of it. And that's what the malaise one feels in high school is: mental queasiness.
Mind you bits like this probably fail to go over well with the teachers and parents
Yes, as you suspect, a lot of the stuff you learn in your classes is crap. And yes, as you suspect, the college admissions process is largely a charade. But like many fouls, this one was unintentional. [7] So just keep playing.
Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do. The best plan, I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. Don't just do what they tell you, and don't just refuse to. Instead treat school as a day job. As day jobs go, it's pretty sweet. You're done at 3 o'clock, and you can even work on your own stuff while you're there.
On the other hand this, a great truth, despite his subsequent illustration, probably goes straight over the heads of the entire audience. It sounds too obvious, even though that property (obvious in retrospect) is what frequently marks great genius
People who do great things look at the same world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that's compellingly mysterious.
This one is rather limited to youngsters, but it is good nonetheless:
Don't disregard unseemly motivations. One of the most powerful is the desire to be better than other people at something. Hardy said that's what got him started, and I think the only unusual thing about him is that he admitted it. Another powerful motivator is the desire to do, or know, things you're not supposed to. Closely related is the desire to do something audacious. Sixteen year olds aren't supposed to write novels. So if you try, anything you achieve is on the plus side of the ledger; if you fail utterly, you're doing no worse than expectations.
On the other hand this one goes back to the timeless verities:
A key ingredient in many projects, almost a project on its own, is to find good books. Most books are bad. Nearly all textbooks are bad. So don't assume a subject is to be learned from whatever book on it happens to be closest. You have to search actively for the tiny number of good books.
It is no surprise to me that a school would be unwilling to let a person who speaks the truth like this make a speech to the kiddies. Lies to children is an honourable calling and telling the truth, generally gets everyone in trouble.