What Bill Gates can teach today’s mollycoddling parents

‘I was different,’ Bill Gates describes his childish self, ‘School… felt slow. I found it hard to stay interested in what we were learning; my thoughts wandered. When something did catch my attention, I might leap up from my seat, frantically raise my hand or shout out an answer.’

In his autobiography, Source Code: My beginnings, the schoolboy who went on to become the original tech bro, co-founder of Microsoft and global philanthropist, describes his fascination with learning outside the box. Let classmates dutifully repeat their multiplication tables; he was discovering that the Adelie penguin could hold its breath for six minutes under water and that sound was a propagation of energy made by vibrations affected by the density and stiffness of the material it travels through.

Source Code’s heart-tugging memories of loving, community-spirited parents, a mould-breaking grandmother, and a succession of mentors who didn’t write off the little boy who rocked back and forth as he asked outlandish questions, have earned Gates positive reviews.