The 50 Rules

REAL RULES FOR THE REAL WORLD

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:47:16 GMT

Nice story in today's Pittsburgh Tribune Review... with an interesting twist. they asked readers for their own input on advice....

SOME KID REACTION

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:43:29 GMT

One parent recounts using the "50 Rules" as bed time reading....

The "50 Rules" in the St. Louis Post Dispatch

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:40:01 GMT

I'm a little late on this, but here is a feature on the "50 Rules" from the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Do you know Charles J. Sykes?

He's the guy who wrote in the mid-1990s a set of rules that began with "Life isn't fair, get used to it."

Then for the next several years he watched it travel the length and breadth of the Internet — with Microsoft zillionaire Bill Gates getting credit for writing it.

"It wasn't fair that Gates got the credit, but I learned to deal with that," Sykes said with a laugh. "But if he wants to send me some money, that would be fair."

IT TAKES A PARENT

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 16:42:57 GMT

I was a guest on Betsy Hart's show this week. You can listen to it here on the National Review Website.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2007
Charles Sykes and “Adult Supervision”
Charlie Sykes, author of 50 Things Your Kids Won’t Learn in School, just wrote a really great piece for the Wall Street Journal called “Adult Supervision.” In it he describes a culture that seems to want to shroud our kids in bubble wrap. Take the reporters at ABC News, for instance. They recently revealed that — gasp! — many playgrounds have germs! (ABC should see my kitchen. Actually, they shouldn’t.) What’s an overprotective culture costing our children? Charlie Sykes has added it up. Tune in.

LISTEN

COMMON SENSE IS COUNTER-CULTURAL

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:00:14 GMT

A nice profile in the Washington Times:

Charles Sykes may be a smart guy who knows his way around a computer, but he's not a software mogul.

Why, then, do so many people think that Microsoft founder Bill Gates wrote a list of "Rules Kids Won't Learn In School" that Mr. Sykes first published more than a decade ago?

A successful columnist, author and Milwaukee radio talk-show host, Mr. Sykes mostly blames a number of Internet and individual e-mailers who circulated the list with the false attribution.

It was at first "flattering, but ultimately somewhat annoying," Mr. Sykes says about his list of rules being attributed to a computer genius with a fortune estimated at more than $50 billion.

Why Mr. Gates? Well, it might have been Mr. Sykes' rule No. 11 (in a list of 14) that said, "Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could."

The rules list "started popping up on thousands of Internet sites" and — despite debunking as an "urban legend" by Snopes.com and others — are still making the rounds.

He doesn't complain that this is unfair, however, perhaps because Rule No. 1 on his list is: "Life is not fair. Get used to it." ...

THE STRANGE WAR ON HOMEWORK

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:57:54 GMT

My piece on The American Thinker:

American students continue to fall behind much of the rest of the world in math and science and recent surveys of their literacy and knowledge of history, civics and geography hover between embarrassing and "Oh my God."

But one of the hottest issues in American education today is the crusade to cut down on "excessive" homework; and the war is being waged not by educrats, but by parents.

WIMPIFYING AMERICA

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 06:03:27 GMT

My piece in this morning's Wall Street Journal:

Adult Supervision
We're paying the price for the epidemic of overprotectiveness.
By CHARLES SYKES

OUR PERMANENT ADOLESCENTS

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:06:22 GMT

Columnist Suzanne Fields notes that we have a growing-up problem:

Boomers came of age eager to offend everybody but were so indulged that anything that offended them became taboo. The social slights sensitive adolescents always decried were writ large with narcissistic perception codified in political correctness.

Edgar Friedenberg's "Vanishing Adolescent" has been succeeded by books analyzing perpetual adolescence. Charles Sykes, in his "50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School," looks at what happens to children and grandchildren of boomers who suffered institutional and parental permissiveness. Rule 4 of the rules not learned: "You are not entitled." Examples include "the double latte with cream, Michael Jordan running shoes, a cell phone with limitless text-messaging." "You'll have to work for all of it," he writes, "and then figure out how to pay for it."

Diana West in her book, "The Death of the Grown-Up," says trouble began when children started aspiring to adolescence rather than adulthood. They replaced information with animation: "More adults, ages 18 to 49, watch the Cartoon Network than watch CNN."

An adolescent lurches within minutes from fear and insecurity to self-confidence and bravado. A culture sustains perpetual adolescence at deadly peril. It's our collective identity crisis.

ZERO TOLERANCE NONSENSE

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:44:02 GMT

In our era of zero-tolerance, I would surely have spent most of elementary and middle school shuttling between suspensions and expulsions, with an occasional time out for social studies. More

DO KIDS HAVE TOO MUCH HOMEWORK?

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:32:03 GMT

The parental backlash has begun. You can read some of the complaints here and here.

You can listen here to our lively discussion on my radio show.

The conversation sparked an outpouring of emails, which you can read below....