Swagger

In the non-fiction department, author Lisa Bloom brings us Swagger, a book about raising young boys in modern society here in the U.S. (and places that think we’re cool and want to imitate us).

The result is nothing short of a horror story. The book is an endless parade of anecdotes and statistics that illustrate the positively horrifying trends in our society today in the areas of education and what is viewed as cool, and provides some pretty solid advice on how to help your young boys navigate the extensive maze of pitfalls and grow into productive and decent young men. If you have a young boy, read this. Please. Sure, there may be some stuff that doesn’t apply or things that you’re already doing. I was very pleased that we are doing many of the things suggested here and have independently verified the positive results in our own son’s life, but I guess I’ve been a bit sheltered in that I had no idea just how challenging of a world that our kids are growing up in.

The bits on education alone are startling. Internationally, the U.S. really only leads in one specific area, and it is completely and totally the wrong one. Our kids are thoroughly convinced of their own awesomeness and the awesomeness of the U.S. They truly and honestly believe, in large numbers, that they are brilliant at math and reading/writing even though we are routinely trounced by MANY other countries and sit down near the bottom score-wise among developed countries. Celebrity is now THE objective. Reading is uncool. And intense misogyny and violence are now cool. Illiteracy out of high school is unbelievably high. Think about that for a moment. A large number of people GRADUATE HIGH SCHOOL illiterate. How can that possibly happen in this day and age, and in this self-professed best-country-ever-double-stamps-no-take-backs-ever-infinity?! The reasoning at its core is a set of grossly misaligned priorities. As a country (and for those following in our footsteps), we’ll pay a dear price for this. Anyway, get it and read it. I’m going to try something new here and say that this isn’t an optional recommendation. I command you, read it. (well, the percentage of you that can actually read anyway)