Scott Adams has a great blog post today titled The Unhappiness Motivator. In it, he wonders whether today’s students are so overloaded with homework that they don’t have a chance to experience shitty jobs, and thus may lack the drive to push themselves to achieve an easier lifestyle.

I can’t speak for society at large, but based on a scientific sample of one guy named Jon, I can confirm that working boring, tedious, manual labor jobs during my summers in high school absolutely motivated me to seek a career that provided an easier, more comfortable life. I felt so lost and frustrated out there on the farm, and I quickly realized it was no life for me.

Edit: And, of course, the requisite zinger:

Research tells us that piling on the homework doesn’t make kids smarter. Schools do it anyway, because although schools teach science, apparently they don’t believe in it.