Thursday, February 8, 2018

Book Recommendation: The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis--and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance by Ben Sasse

Book Recommendation: The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis--and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance by Ben Sasse

This book should be read by everyone, but I think it’s a “must read” for parents, educators and policy makers. (For folks 15 to 25 too, but how to get them to read it?) Though Sasse is a Republican senator, it is not a political book. Senator Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate, said, “The book is practical, helpful and conversational. I wish it had been written 20 years ago.” We’ve all bemoaned the lack of resiliency in todays “emerging adults,” like the story of the two female college students who discovering a mouse in their apartment and called the police. And after the police trapped it, the girls went to therapy! Sasse goes through all of that snowflake mentality and puts the blame where it belongs, not on “millennial slackers,” but on the parents and educators who took the toughness out of life. Sasse offers a lot of solutions. (Though I very much fear it is too late to save the country.) It starts with hooking kids on reading, and not junk, but enough serious non-fiction to expand their horizons. I was fortunate in that I developed a love of reading very early. I still remember books I received for Christmas in junior high. How I’m almost 72 and read a book a week…and have shelves of unread books waiting, mostly history (I have a master’s in it, probably why I like Sasse so much.). If there is a weakness in Sasse’s book, it is that a lot of his solutions, like encouraging international travel while in school, work for the affluent upper middle class. The single mom who’s feeding the kids fried baloney and is two months behind on the rent isn’t thinking about how to send the kids to France. But there is a route open to them to develop into adults: military service, the tougher the better. And, yes, it doesn’t work for everyone, what does? And the services are being undermined by the PC wave, meaning the results won’t be as strong as 20 or 40 years ago. Perhaps the military didn’t occur to Sasse because he didn’t serve and can’t imagine his kids doing so. But these “emerging adults” need to develop a work ethic, resiliency, tenacity and self-discipline, to learn to take responsibility for their actions and to focus on the mission, on getting the job down. I got that at Parris Island in 1964 from my Marine Corps Drill Instructors Sgt. E. Owens, Jr, Sgt. M. P. Martin, and Sgt. W. H. Harris., and because of them, I’ve had a long, successful and happy life. They are still hiring. With that addition, I still highly recommend Sasse’s book. 

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