Wonder

The world would be a very different place if Al Gore hadn’t graced us with the ultimate gift of the Internet.  The amount of productive hours during the day would be so much higher if not for the amazing mental black holes of Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest, eBay, and many others.  Those sites comprise the essential nutrients required for a full and satisfying life.  While I appreciate the gift of extreme online time wasters, I would be forever grateful if Mr. Gore would tighten security at all of the major retailers and reduce his carbon footprint.  I don’t think I’m asking for miracles.

Wonder is an amazing tool that inspires creative and imaginative thinking, and was most likely the catalyst for many of the sites mentioned above and the Internet itself.  Studies have indicated that we are all born with a sense of wonder, but it is usually stripped from us of over time to make room for more pragmatic data.  There are few safe havens for wondering minds in our society.  Irrelevant facts and figures—history is often repeated even by those who know it—are force-fed into us while mass deletions of everything great from the factory is replaced.  I lost my sense of wonder on the first day of pre-school when I wondered why I had to be there.  Just being forced out of the house at that age before I was ready was a traumatic experience.  Why did it have to be so early in the morning?  The pain is still fresh today.

The spontaneous insurrection I attempted couldn't garner the requisite support for victory, so I was forced to stay in school.  The other students are at fault because I am a great leader on the level of General Crassus of Rome (that’s more useless history for you).  The language skills of my classmates prevented them from understanding the words that were coming out of my mouth.  Their lack of linguistic depth was the unfortunate result of parents who dared to send their children out into the world before they were prepared.

I spent most of my pre-school time staring out the windows daydreaming and hoping for a better future while pining for the cutest girl in class who didn’t have any interest in me.  That was to be a common theme throughout my educational career even when stuck in classrooms without windows.

Wonder returns to me each time I'm lapping a client's vehicle when I wonder if I'm going to make the next turn or fly off the track backward.  The possibilities are infinite.  So far my wonder has not slowed my pace or prevented catastrophic and total loss of customer vehicles.  Thank goodness we use only the most robust safety equipment.

That type of excitement is bad for the heart and can take its toll on the body over time.  That’s why I make sure all AcMo employees monitor their baselines to detect changes in their performance that might indicate an issue before it becomes a drain on our insurance premiums.

I've been plotting my revenge ever since I ejected from the traditional educational system.  I’m doing my best Peter Thiel impression with my personal attempt to upend the traditional educational system.  I refused to learn facts and figures that would never serve me again after my educational career had concluded.  I had a lot of unfinished exams throughout that period, but through the magic of electronic records, none of that ever happened.  Calculating change due was a painful lesson that took me years to master.  When I emerged from my books as a change professional, I was shocked to learn that no one uses cash anymore, and the computers can do the calculations faster and better anyway.  We all know computers never get anything wrong.  Why did I waste years of my life and massive brainpower on arithmetic?  I can’t get back any of that.  I have A LOT of change due.

All of this pent up disdain for education has forced me to create the next generation of the educational industrial complex.  The AcMo Wonder School® will open at some point in 2015 to generate the next class of founders.

The school is designed to maximize wonder and the powers it facilitates.  The entrance exams are a rigorous mix of psychological and mental tests.  We can only accept the most rebellious thinkers.  The daily routine will be randomized to prevent backsliding performance.  The basic structure will consist of six recesses per day with only three 20 minute classroom sessions.  Our goal is to inspire imagination and wonder within our students and to help them learn the required life lessons at their own pace.  AcMo technologies and proven processes will show the students that there are no limits to the power of our minds.  We will strive to return the students at the conclusion of each school day tired and ready to sleep so that there will not be any late night shenanigans before bedtime.  The best part is that school will be open on Saturdays and all major holidays.  Parents who don’t know what to do with their children on a holiday morning can send them to school.

You may think that this effort will interfere with the AcMoForm® revenue stream, but don't worry because the rejected students who attend traditional schools will still need sleep aids for naptime and bedtime because of their traditional classroom structure and relative lack of physical activity compared to Wonder School® students.  Those same traditional students will become employees of Wonder School® graduates because AcMo Wonder School® graduates will be the founders of the next generation of Internet technologies and whatever comes after the Internet.  When you need a refrigerator that can wirelessly control your neighbor’s vacuum cleaner and also drive the car to its destination, you’ll be calling on an AcMo Wonder School® graduate to create it.

Any school is only as good as its teachers.  AcMo will scour the Earth to hire the best wayward minds, including several futurists and former Google employees.  The most important hire might be a cat herder because they have the most experience corralling unwilling animals, which I believe will translate well to the staff and students.  AcMo doesn’t already have a cat herder because we don’t have any cats.  The ones we did have kept disappearing under mysterious circumstances.  The police suspect alien abductions, but they are just making up stuff to avoid doing any investigative work.

The future of education and the world would not have been possible without the magical powers of Al Gore.  We are considering giving him an honorary position on the school’s board of directors if he will let us use his jet.  That would make it easier for us to establish more schools across the country and the world.  Russia would not be enduring this current crisis if we had been able to establish a Wonder School® there.

The initial class list is by invitation only.  Please do not take offense if your child is deemed too normal to attend.  There is a place for normal children somewhere, just not at an AcMo affiliated school.  We should see the closure of all traditional colleges within the next ten years if the plan works the way I’ve outlined it.  That will be about the time AcMo College appears to fill the void in the education system.  Start saving now because you are going to suffer from extreme sticker shock when AcMo College’s fees are announced if you think college is expensive today.