After your first job, is anyone asking you what your GPA was? No, they don't care. They ask you: Are you a good leader? Do people follow you? Do you have integrity? Are you innovative? Do you solve problems? Somebody's got to do that homework and redesign the educational system so that it can actually train people to be successful in life.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that skills and character are more important than academic grades in real-life success.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson highlights a crucial shift in how we view education and success. He argues that after landing a job, employers focus more on an individual's leadership abilities, integrity, and problem-solving skills, rather than their GPA. This realization sheds light on the necessity for an educational system that prioritizes these qualities and prepares individuals for practical challenges in life, rather than solely academic achievements.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech addressing young graduates entering the workforce.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
The press still thinks [global warming] is controversial. So they find the 1% of the scientists and put them up as if they're 50% of the research results. You in the public would have no idea that this is basically a done deal and that we're on to other problems, because the journalists are trying to give it a 50/50 story. It's not a 50/50 story. It's not. Period.
As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.
In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined.
One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.
Lots of people think, well, we're humans; we're the most intelligent and accomplished species; we're in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.
Our school systems have to realize that everybody doesn't learn the same way, and no one learns without some emotional support.
I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.
Education has for its object the formation of character.
The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity; so have some little frocks; but they are both not the kind of thing you can run up in half an hour with a machine.
One of the many interesting and surprising experiences of the beginner in child analysis is to find in even very young children a capacity for insight which is often far greater than that of adults.
When the primary people who have influence and power in our communities are not even really allowed to educate you on who to vote for and against, we're in trouble.
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