Review by Michelle Malkin - michellemalkin.com

Charles J. Sykes has long been one of my favorite chroniclers of our dumbed-down education and the corrupting effects of the self-esteem movement. I just received his new book, set for release on August 21, titled “50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School: Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education.” Witty, acerbic, reality-grounded. It’s a great purchase for college-bound friends/family or parents with school-age kids.

Q&A With Charles Sykes

In the foreword to 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn In School, you explain that the rules are a "blunt contrast to the thumb sucking, feel good infantilism that has become so common in American education and culture."

Is there a specific incident that symbolizes the backfiring "warm & fuzzy" American education and is the inspiration for the rules?

How about the hand-wringing over whether using red ink to correct papers hurts kid’s self-esteem? Or the movement to ban dodgeball because it’s too violent? We’re dealing with a mindset that’s afraid to hurt anybody’s feelings – everybody’s got to feel good about themselves. So we try to pretend everybody’s a winner, nobody’s a loser and we protect kids from anything that might be in the least way stressful. Recently some schools in North Carolina began putting big tents up over playgrounds, so that kids wouldn’t have to play in the sun. We used to have trees for that sort of thing. Actually, we didn’t worry about kids playing outside -- that's what kids did. These days, the nannies are afraid to let kids experience life at all. We don’t let them be kids.

Throughout 50 Rules you reference a "bubble wrap mentality" when it comes to the way kids are educated today. Can you explain your theory?

We assume that kids are so frail and easily bruised that they have to be insulated from… life. Instead of preparing kids to deal with the inevitable setbacks in life, modern day nannies want to wrap them in the equivalent of bubble-wrap. No bumps, no bruises, no disappointments, but also none of the challenges and tests of real life. We might put a child with a rare disease in a bubble, but the bubble wrap is more mundane. But it works the same way. A child who grows up in a bubble doesn’t develop any immunity to the outside world; and a child who grows up in an educational bubble-wrap isn’t going to be prepared for the symptoms of life: failure, disappointments and having to make tough choices.

The 50 Rules aren’t just helpful for kids and their parents, but for future employers of kids expecting gold stars and self esteem boosts. What are the side effects US corporations are experiencing at the hands of a generation that expects to be promoted to Vice President after 6 months?

If you’ve gotten gold stars and happy faces your whole life, the workplace is going to be kind of a shock: an entitled, spoiled generation of kids who feel very good about themselves meets a job where something is actually expected of them. We’re actually seeing an epidemic of grads who are having a tough time making the transition to the work world. Employers are having to cope with a generation that often lacks basic skills but also expects their bosses to be as accommodating as mommy and daddy. The kids want it all and they want it now; and they are not always willing to make the sacrifices that requires. And why should they? They never had to before.

Who is to blame for all of this? Schools? Society? Kids? Or Parents?

All of the above.

When did this all change? How did we go from being a nation of confident, self-reliant adults into a country that worries about backpacks being too heavy?

I blame the Baby Boomers, and I’m one of them. We were the most doted upon and pampered generation in history and now we’re parents. We never went through a Great Depression or fought in a major war, so we don’t feel pressure to raise a generation of tough, independent, self-reliant kids. We want to be their buddies; we want to be cool. Boomers also became the Super Parents, who morphed into the dreaded "Helicopter Parents" who micromanage every aspect of their kids lives and just won’t let them grow up.

Which do you think is a larger sign that the apocalypse is near, the continuing success of MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen, the Girl Scout "Stress Badge" earned by going to a spa or certain schools’ elimination of using red pen to grade papers?

All of them: the fact that they are all happening at the same time. There was a study recently that found that the number of kids who walked or rode their bikes to school has fallen dramatically in recent years. Instead, mommy and daddy were driving them to school, even if they lived only a few blocks away. Why? Is it a safety issue? A laziness issue? We often wonder why so many girls leave the house dressed like hookers. Could this all be a fear of saying no? Of asking kids to do anything that might make them feel bad? Or think that their parents aren’t cool?

What is your favorite rule?

That varies, depending on what mood I’m in. Sometimes it’s one of the ones where I tell kids that the world doesn’t revolve around them and they need to suck it up and deal with it; sometimes it’s one of the later rules like the one that says to remember to check the guinea pig in the basement. That one basically reminds us to pay attention to the people around us, those we might forget about when we get too wrapped up in our lives.