| 50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School: Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education | 
 enlarge | Author: Charles J. Sykes
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $9.79
You Save: $10.16 (51%)
New (34) Used (12) from $9.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 73933
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9
ISBN: 031236038X
Dewey Decimal Number: 649.1
EAN: 9780312360382
ASIN: 031236038X
Publication Date: August 21, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Charles J. Sykes offers life lessons that are not included in the curriculum for most children today: honest advice about what they will encounter in the “real world” post-schooling and how their parents can help them best prepare—not with cushy self-esteem talks, but rather with honest challenges. His 50 lessons are frank, sometimes harsh, and often hilarious, including:
#1 Life is not fair. Get used to it. #15 Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it “opportunity.”#43 Don’t let the success of other depress you.
#48 Tell yourself the story of your life. Have a point.
Sykes elaborates on each of his points, creating a wise, no-nonsense guide for parents to help their children help themselves.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Stating the painfully obvious... October 25, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Why is it that only a very small minority of authors will state things that are painfully obvious? "Life is not fair. Get over it" would be an obvious example.
In fact, the problem with our schools goes back at least to the time of the French Revolution. Flaubert has a memorable character in "Sentimental Education" who works for a while as a school-teacher, and is FANATICALLY OPPOSED to the awarding of prizes as "fatal to equality."
Well, Charles Sykes is here to remind us of the obvious: your school may have tried to get rid of "winners and losers," but reality has not!
To flesh out the somewhat philosophical rules offered here, I completely recommend Adam Shepard's "Scratch Beginnings." Adam Shepard made a completely voluntary journey from "Soft America" to "Hard America," and the two books make excellent reading together.
One of the underlying messages in this book, it seems to me, is this: "Affordable daycare? Universal preschool? Hasn't it occurred to anyone here to do it themselves?" No, Mommies must have "prestigious careers" as HR flunkies in the Silicon Valley -- so much MORE rewarding than raising a family BY YOURSELF.
Everyone wants to save the planet, but nobody wants to help clean the house! :-)
Maybe the Do It Yourself concept will make a huge comeback, with the huge difference that it won't be about woodworking, or oven-baked bread, or keeping bees: it will be about raising your own children yourself.
All this aside, Sykes' book is tremendous reading, and very thought-provoking.
50 things adults never learned in school either. September 6, 2008
50 Things Your Kids Won't Learn In School is packed full of the kind of thaings they just don't mention in the class room - mainly that the most important thng in life is to fit in. Never mind the job - tell your boss what a grand job he's doing and you don't have to do a thing yourself. What you do have to do is get along with the rest of the staff. Why did nobody ever tell me that?
 Conservative Pundit June 24, 2008
0 out of 12 found this review helpful
It looks like a book by a conservative pundit. Surely, he is. After all, you may say that he rationalizes poverty.
Reality Bites! June 15, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
Mr. Sykes- just said quit the babysitting and let them live, that includes all the ups and downs that life has to offer.
50 rules kids won't learn in school June 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is filled with common sense advice for children, teenagers and anyone else who needs to face reality. The content of the text shifts the focus off self and on to how to make the best choices so that children can grow into happy, emotionally healthy adudlts. I would recommend this book for teachers, parents and anyone else who deals with young people. I bought this book after buying and reading another by the same author, "Dumbing down our Kids", also highly recommended.
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