Ready or Not
Why Treating Children as Small Adults Endangers Their Future - and Ours
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- £11.99
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- £11.99
Publisher Description
"Children today grow up so fast!" How often we hear those words, uttered both in frustrated good humor and in dumbfounded astonishment. Every day the American people hear about kids doing things, both good and bad, that were once thought to be well beyond their scope: flying airplanes, running companies, committing mass murder. Creatures of the information age, today's children sometimes seem to know more than their parents. They surf the Internet rather than read books, they watch South Park instead of The Cosby Show, they wear form-fitting capri pants and tank tops instead of sundresses; in short, they are sophisticated beyond their years. These facts lead us to wonder: Is childhood becoming extinct?
In Ready or Not, Kay S. Hymowitz offers a startling new interpretation of what makes our children tick and where the moral anomie of today's children comes from. She reveals how our ideas about childrearing itself have been transformed, perniciously, in reponse to the theories of various "experts" -- educators, psychologists, lawyers, media executives -- who have encouraged us to view children as small adults, autonomous actors who know what is best for themselves and who have no need for adult instruction or supervision. Today's children and teenagers have been encouraged by their parents and teachers to function as individuals to such an extent that they make practically every decision on their own -- what to wear, what to study, and even what values they will adhere to. The idea of childhood as a time of limited competence, in which adults prepare the young for maturity, has fallen into disrepute; independence has become not the reward of time, but rather something that our children have come to expect and demand at increasingly younger ages.
One of the great ironies of turning our children into small adults is that American society has become less successful at producing truly mature men and women. When sophisticated children do grow up, they often find themselves unable to accept real adult responsibilities. Thus we see more people in their twenties and thirties living like children, unwilling to embark on careers or to start families. Until we recognize that children are different from grownups and need to be nurtured as such, Hymowitz argues, our society will be hollow at its core.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Asking how we can raise morally responsible children while nurturing their individuality, Hymowitz critiques the radical individualism that seems to have subsumed concern for the common good, the narrow vocationalism of much education, a vulgar and sensationalized media and the insidious ways in which such natural childhood activities as play and exploration have been channeled toward enhanced cognition and academic achievement. The author, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, advocates somewhat nostalgically for a return to the republican childhood of the 19th century--"a profound moral achievement"--that she believes effectively socialized the young into life as active democratic citizens. In a clear and accessible style, Hymowitz draws on the work of educational and psychological theorists, as well as popular culture, to develop her arguments. Unfortunately, the book suffers from a number of conceptual weaknesses, including the notion of "anticulturalism" (the belief that today's youth are being raised outside the influence of culture) and that we can overcome anomie and nihilism by constructing and transmitting a "common culture" (whose culture this would be remains largely unaddressed). Those readers who believe that contemporary social problems can be solved with a renewed emphasis on old-fashioned family values, back-to-basics schooling and rejuvenated adult authority will find much in this book resonant. Those who question the viability of returning to a romanticized past will find the complex issues addressed here oversimplified and framed in rather tired ideological terms.