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Title: A Tribe Apart : A Journey into the Heart of American Adolescence by Patricia Hersch ISBN: 0-345-43594-X Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 03 August, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.72 (43 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Misses the point
Comment: Hersch's book begins by citing the Columbine and other school shootings as proof of her claim of an "insidious" trend toward teenagers becoming "a tribe apart" ruled by flawed "adolescent logic" and values. This claim is thoroughly questionable. First, by any measure, the vast majority of kids are good, most parents are good parents, and Hersch's blanket statements about all teenagers from the eight suburban Reston, Virginia, youths she selected to study is classic overgeneralization. Second, the school shootings of the last three years (by 11 kids out of the 25 million teenagers attending public schools, let's remember) were not the apex of rising slaughter; they were rare anomalies at a time (1998-99) when school violence and homicide by suburban youth stood at a 25-year LOW. Third, like so many grownups now deploring kids as lost and ill behaved, Hersch trains a critical microscope on teenagers but straps on blinders when it comes to her own generation. If some teens she studied sneak out of their house at night and experiment with alcohol, drugs, sex, and petty crime, how does that make them "a tribe apart" from how their Baby Boom parents acted as kids or how adults act today? In suburban Fairfax County, Virginia, where Hersch studied Reston's "tribal" teens, only one in eight people who die from drug or alcohol overdoses are under age 25; three-fourths are over age 30, just the tip of the middle-aged drug abuse problem. Virginia Uniform Crime Reports show that EVERY WEEK in Fairfax County in the 1990s, 50 grownups were arrested for violent crimes, 100 for property felonies, 200 for drunken and drug-related crimes, and 500 for all offenses -- one every 20 minutes! Half these adult offenses are by 30- and 40-agers, mostly white, the nation's fastest-growing crime population (what about all those gun massacres by middle-agers from Atlanta to Honolulu lately... do they prove midlifers are an amoral "tribe apart"?) and the parent generation of the kids Hersch studies. Occasionally she hints at this "adult" problem. Hersch reports a mother who tells her daughter (who tried to commit suicide because of her abusive father) that "I really don't like someone like you living in my house," another mother who tells her kids she hates them, other parents so self-absorbed with their own troubled marriages and belated identity crises that their children have to raise themselves. This problem goes beyond Hersch's claim that many adults today are merely too busy, "hands off," and trusting to rein in our little barbarians; this rising grownup disarray leaves many youths better off being socialized by peers than by adults. Her ultimate conclusion that those teens and adults who enjoy stable, healthy families are well-adjusted and doing well demands a tougher analysis not of the supposed "secret lives" of teens, but why so many suburban grownups are messed up. Hersch has sympathy for kids and rightly deplores today's paranoid climate toward young people, which makes it baffling that she authored a one-sided book that adds to paranoia. Donna Gaines' updated "Teenage Wasteland," unlike most of the avalanche of our-kids-are-terrible books, presents a more balanced picture of the suburban grownup crisis and the complex ways (some successful, some not) kids try to cope with it. Mike Males, Ph.D. Santa Cruz, CA Email [email protected]
Rating: 4
Summary: I was there...
Comment: Reading A Tribe Apart was like reliving my high school experience. I am a '97 graduate of South Lakes high school and I know just about everyone mentioned in the book. Mrs. Hersch does a good job of making the reader realize that everyone that you see in the hallways isn't just another pretty face. It made me wonder about all the kids in high school that I never really knew. I enjoyed reading the book, but maybe that is because I went to the school and it describes multiple events that I attended. However, I think that South Lakes was probably a typical high school and that everyone will be able to relate to the trials and tribulations that these kids have faced in some way or another. Yes, Mrs. Hersch doesn't reveal much that isn't already known about suburban youth in America. Yes, she tends to generalize and blame problems on the current culture, music, and parents instead of giving the responsibility to the kids themselves. That's nothing new. But what she does do is give you a glimpse inside 8 individual lives that you would not have known about if not for this book. It is the story of eight kids at one high school. There may be similarities to other kids at other high schools but the beauty of this book is the detail and the passion she brings to telling the story of THESE kids, not the general statements that can be inferred about today's youth. Forty years from now when I want to remember my high school experience, I will be able to read this book and know what it felt like to be in high school and not know who your classmates really were. A Tribe Apart gives you the chance to learn more about high school students than what it says next to their picture in the yearbook...
Rating: 5
Summary: Great
Comment: I thought this book was great. Very informative and I felt it was true to what goes on his children's lives. I had to read this in college about 6 years ago and I have recommended it to every parent I know, and they have had glowing reviews.
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Title: The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager by Thomas Hine ISBN: 0380728532 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: We Want to Be Known: Learning from Adolescent Girls by Ruth Hubbard, Maureen Barbieri, Brenda Miller Power ISBN: 1571100792 Publisher: Stenhouse Pub Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $23.13 |
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Title: All Grown Up and No Place to Go: Teenagers in Crisis by David Elkind ISBN: 0201483858 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: December, 1997 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
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Title: Class Dismissed : A Year in the Life of an American High School, a Glimpse into the Heart of a Nation by Meredith Maran ISBN: 0312283091 Publisher: Griffin Trade Paperback Pub. Date: 10 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Framing Youth: Ten Myths About the Next Generation by Mike A. Males ISBN: 1567511481 Publisher: LPC Pub. Date: March, 1999 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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