Rating: 
Summary: Truly Insightful and Disturbing
Review: "Ready or Not.." is a shocking look into some of the causes of our cultural and social decay. Ms. Hymowitz, an eloquent and insightful thinker, attacks the "anti-cultural" premise that the human mind is an automatic product of nature--i.e. that we are just born with a capacity to properly "assimilate" information directly from the environment. The idea that children are born with an inherantly rational mental structure hard-wired into the brain itself and that orderly, pro-social behavior will automatically manifest if given time and patience. Hymowitz deftly, and with her great wit, punches numerous holes in the filmsy armor of postmodern "cognitive" psychology and in its place resurrects the more old fashioned notion (held by many of our greatest thinkers including Freud) that humans are born into a state of chaos and need to be shaped and molded by culture. In fact great effort is needed to take a completely subjective and amoral being driven by boundless desire and unbridled instinct (think of the toddlers you know) and mold him or her into a productive citizen capable of identifying with others and working productively in the extended human community of family, neighborhood , nation and planet. Hymowitz might argue that the powers that be have something else in mind, however--a "new" kind of child/adult; the perfect consumer and competator. A person unencumered by love or loyalty, easily entranced by shiny objects and blandly reassuring voices. The perfect denizen (not citizen) of the impersonal world of conspicuous consumption and waste, coldly isolated 'communities' and temporary employment.
Rating:
Summary: Great Overview Book
Review: Hymowitz has provided a great overview of our current cultural syndrome. Unlike Kirkus, I do not think "anticulture" thesis is a strawman. Instead I find it to be a fascinating and effective description of the phenomena parents fight (or ignore) on a daily basis. The culturaly elite perspective (which permeates the Kirkus review) takes a deserved beating. I have placed this book on my website recommend list bookshelf because I think this book will help intellegent parents discern the background that drives and intensifies their parenting concerns. Good Work! Dear Mrs. Web
Rating:
Summary: Great Overview Book
Review: Hymowitz has provided a great overview of our current cultural syndrome. Unlike Kirkus, I do not think "anticulture" thesis is a strawman. Instead I find it to be a fascinating and effective description of the phenomena parents fight (or ignore) on a daily basis. The culturaly elite perspective (which permeates the Kirkus review) takes a deserved beating. I have placed this book on my website recommend list bookshelf because I think this book will help intellegent parents discern the background that drives and intensifies their parenting concerns. Good Work! Dear Mrs. Web
Rating: 
Summary: Changed the way I see kids and how adults respond to them
Review: I haven't finished this book, so I can't say that it ends the way I want it to. (With ideas on how to combat the anticultural movement.) But, I can say that the first few chapters changed my way of thinking about kids, education and the media. I can't go a day without something happening that illustrates what this author is talking about. I want to give this to all my teacher friends and make them read it. I think this book is a must for parents, administrators and teachers.
Rating: 
Summary: How about grown-up grownups?
Review: Like every elder back to ancient Greece who proclaimed "today's kids" uniquely rotten, Kay Hymowitz relies on unfounded prejudices and indictment by anecdote. A few examples of many: - Hymowitz's introduction complains that "anticultural" forces make today's children profoundly more criminal and violent at younger ages than those of 30 years ago. Yet, FBI Uniform Crime Reports show rates of felony crime and murder by children younger than 13 are lower today than at any time since reports were first compiled 35 years ago. Teenagers' rates of serious crime, violent death, drug and alcohol fatality, drunken driving, school dropout, and unemployment are lower today than in 1970, while ACT scores, graduation, college enrollment, and community volunteerism are higher. - How, then, does Hymowitz declare today's kids so awful? By fixating on a very few school killers and miscreants as typical of all 50 million students. Well, if a few bad apples are the barrel, why doesn't Hymowitz anoint Charles Manson's killers, Texas Tower massacrer Charles Whitman, or racist lynchers as typical products of the pre-1960, raditional "republican" childraising she admires? - Hymowitz claims, "the increase in public school violence has been widely documented." It hasn't. The only long-term study, Monitoring the Future's high school surveys, finds violence, injury, weapons, and threats rarer today than in past decades. She claims youths have so many rights that adults could "do nothing" to stop school shooters Kinkel, Klebold, Harris. Bizarre. All three of her examples had been referred to police and psychiatrists; two were medicated. - The tough-on-teens Hymowitz is squishy-soft on her own generation. Some facts Hymowitz ignores: In the last 25 years, violent and property crime rates doubled, drug death and arrest rates tripled, imprisonment quadrupled, and family disarray multiplied among America's over-30 adults. In 1999, middle-aged gunners' mass slaughters in churches, offices, community centers, and homes killed or maimed 100 people, 30 of them children. More kids are murdered by parents in household violence every four days than in school murders in a year, yet Hymowitz dismisses child abuse. - A "cultural barometer" Hymowitz never touches: In 1975, a high schooler was 4 times more likely to be arrested for a felony than his 40-age parent. Today, Junior and Dad have equal felony arrest levels. If kids grow up faster now, it's because deteriorating adulthood has forced more responsibility on them. - Hymowitz disparages teenagers as "ungainly children" concerned only with sex, violence, and consumerism. Yet trends in teenage births, unwed pregnancy, abortion, venereal disease, and AIDS have paralleled those of adults for decades. Repeatedly, Hymowitz accuses youths of violating adults' "cultural" standards when, in fact, kids are conforming to adult behaviors. Having worked with adolescents for 15 years, I found them complex, most great, a few bad -- not the faceless mass of "Darwinian" savages Hymowitz depicts. I hope most adults don't share her bad attitudes toward the younger generation we, after all, raised. Mike Males, Ph.D. mmales@earthlink.net
Rating:
Summary: Truly Insightful and Disturbing
Review: This book by Kay Hymowitz is excellent and should be read by all parents and educators. It explains just how far society has strayed from giving our children the guidance they need to succeed. I picked up the book with the hope of understanding some of the disturbing changes in the students entering graduate school. I was not disappointed. The author's insight, views and interpretations of the ideas and the events taking place in our society and how they are affecting the current generations are right on the mark. All the consequences discussed by Ms. Hymowitz confront me every day. Most notable is the general lack of maturity and discipline in their lives. This lack of discipline extends from their social behavior and dress to their study habits and commitment to learning. Preparing for a professional career takes desire, dedication and hard work. To many students this is a foreign concept. They are truly lost souls, and "Ready or Not" by Kay Hymowitz explains extremely well why this is so.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent presentation
Review: This book by Kay Hymowitz is excellent and should be read by all parents and educators. It explains just how far society has strayed from giving our children the guidance they need to succeed. I picked up the book with the hope of understanding some of the disturbing changes in the students entering graduate school. I was not disappointed. The author's insight, views and interpretations of the ideas and the events taking place in our society and how they are affecting the current generations are right on the mark. All the consequences discussed by Ms. Hymowitz confront me every day. Most notable is the general lack of maturity and discipline in their lives. This lack of discipline extends from their social behavior and dress to their study habits and commitment to learning. Preparing for a professional career takes desire, dedication and hard work. To many students this is a foreign concept. They are truly lost souls, and "Ready or Not" by Kay Hymowitz explains extremely well why this is so.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant Ideas, Unconscionable Presentation
Review: This book has some timely and important ideas expressed with great clarity, and at moments the author's perceptions of culture are brilliant and hauntingly authentic and genuine. She has important ideas that people in our culture would do well to take heed and listen to. The idea that children are these brilliant geniuses in no need of guidance from adults is appropriately criticized. She observes how we create this myth of independent children with no needs at a time when both working parents have no time to meet such needs if they should exist. Her attention to how advertisers assualt and manipulate children for their own monetary gain is appropriate and well agonized over. What's tragic given the importance and timeliness of her ideas is the approach she takes in expressing them. Her out of context caricatures of a number of authors is unconscionable. For instance her caricature of Robert Coles from a quote in his book "The Moral Development of Children" is so out of context as to make me angry. It's just slander. Read his very balanced book yourself. I assume the event in question really happened and so is raw data. Coles attempts to reflect honestly on it. The author caricatures him for trying to, as if it weren't raw data, but a philosphical principle held by Coles. Other people she slanders so inappropriately in out of context ways are Dr. Spock and Patricia Hersch. She just mocks them, slandering them, and taking their thoughts and ideas out of context. She never tries to really understand what these other authors have to say, what the context is and what real issues are they are trying to address. One huge flaw in this book is the that the author feels free to ignore and not deal with any idea she chooses. Some of her own idealization of parents in her chapter on children's rights is so narrow sighted. Read this chapter with good parents in mind, and you might agree with the author wholeheartedly. If instead you think of number of real cases of parents who beat their children to death every year, you might wonder at the intensity of some of her attacks on people who are trying to deal with these very real problems. The chapter on Postmodern Postadolescence finally goes to far, where she defines maturity as "getting married and having children." She thus finally demonstrates the moral superiority of even those parents who murder their children (since they got married and had children) over someone like Mother Theresa who never did. For someone who rails against "anticulturalism", the author's discussion is amazingly devoid of any wrestling with many of the real cultural and moral questions of our century. She ignores the rise of fascism and nazism in the earlier part of this century. What contributes to the rise of totalitarianism in cultures? This is relevant, because the author's point of view on raising children makes me worry about totalitarianism. There are real issues here that the author ignores completely. If she agonized over how the most cultured country in Europe became the one to act out the holocaust, she might begin to deal with some really relevant questions that need to be asked when dealing with her subject matter.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Ideas, Unconscionable Presentation
Review: This book has some timely and important ideas expressed with great clarity, and at moments the author's perceptions of culture are brilliant and hauntingly authentic and genuine. She has important ideas that people in our culture would do well to take heed and listen to. The idea that children are these brilliant geniuses in no need of guidance from adults is appropriately criticized. She observes how we create this myth of independent children with no needs at a time when both working parents have no time to meet such needs if they should exist. Her attention to how advertisers assualt and manipulate children for their own monetary gain is appropriate and well agonized over. What's tragic given the importance and timeliness of her ideas is the approach she takes in expressing them. Her out of context caricatures of a number of authors is unconscionable. For instance her caricature of Robert Coles from a quote in his book "The Moral Development of Children" is so out of context as to make me angry. It's just slander. Read his very balanced book yourself. I assume the event in question really happened and so is raw data. Coles attempts to reflect honestly on it. The author caricatures him for trying to, as if it weren't raw data, but a philosphical principle held by Coles. Other people she slanders so inappropriately in out of context ways are Dr. Spock and Patricia Hersch. She just mocks them, slandering them, and taking their thoughts and ideas out of context. She never tries to really understand what these other authors have to say, what the context is and what real issues are they are trying to address. One huge flaw in this book is the that the author feels free to ignore and not deal with any idea she chooses. Some of her own idealization of parents in her chapter on children's rights is so narrow sighted. Read this chapter with good parents in mind, and you might agree with the author wholeheartedly. If instead you think of number of real cases of parents who beat their children to death every year, you might wonder at the intensity of some of her attacks on people who are trying to deal with these very real problems. The chapter on Postmodern Postadolescence finally goes to far, where she defines maturity as "getting married and having children." She thus finally demonstrates the moral superiority of even those parents who murder their children (since they got married and had children) over someone like Mother Theresa who never did. For someone who rails against "anticulturalism", the author's discussion is amazingly devoid of any wrestling with many of the real cultural and moral questions of our century. She ignores the rise of fascism and nazism in the earlier part of this century. What contributes to the rise of totalitarianism in cultures? This is relevant, because the author's point of view on raising children makes me worry about totalitarianism. There are real issues here that the author ignores completely. If she agonized over how the most cultured country in Europe became the one to act out the holocaust, she might begin to deal with some really relevant questions that need to be asked when dealing with her subject matter.
Rating:
Summary: a knockout book
Review: This book will give you straight answers and no educratese, no vague generalities, no junkspeak. Anybody who has spent time in a high school classroom needs answers, and this book has them. I have long wondered where the attitude that kids can raise themselves came from; the mindless idea that all children need is love, heavy warm eye contact, strokes, and flattery to develop them into mature adults; that children will always choose what is best for them --- in clothing, food, activities and entertainment --- if only stupid adults would stand aside. This book discusses that wierd, wierd, wierd idea. The reviewer who says that youth crime and violence is the same as in 1970 I suspect is simply prevaricating. But the idea that letting young people have anything they want --- or know to want --- is a wise parenting and teaching strategy has thoroughly permeated the society. Our local newspaper yesterday came out with an article about how parents are finding it difficult to say 'no' to ten-year-old girls who want to dress like streetwalkers in tube tops and jeans that show their navels. Maybe that's why certain male intellectuals cling to the idea; they just might love seeing those little girls in tube tops. Hmmmmmm?
The idea that young people are self-regulating devices seems to have soaked in at all levels and all cultures in this country. This books tells us where that idea came from and why certain people are busy disseminating it. It's a branch or sub-genre of Romanticism, the myth of the Noble Savage, and all the silly pastoralism that goes along with it. People who subscribe most determinedly to anticulturalism do so because they like to think of themselves as superior in kindness and refinement and insightto those who have a grip on reality. They are also lazy. It takes work to say No. Read this book!
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