Ready or Not, Here Life Comes
America’s Top Learning Expert Shows How Today’s Society Makes it Hard for Kids to Grow into Productive Adults - and What We Can Do About It.
The following is a book summary I prepared last year for a Mel Levine Book Cafe. Hope you find it useful!
Background:
Mel Levine is a developmental pediatrician who has
accompanied countless kids on journeys through their school years. He has
witnessed their varied outcomes and now finds himself preoccupied with how and
why different kids turn out so differently. He is especially concerned with
kids who don’t turn out so well and wanted to know what we could have done
differently for them as children and adolescents.
According to Levine, in recent years we have faced an epidemic of career - and life - unreadiness as too many young people begin what he calls the “start-up years” unprepared for the challenge of initiating a productive life. He believes that parents, schools and adolescents themselves can all work together to improve work-life readiness.
Part I: Who is this potentially an issue for?
According to Levine, the young adults he’s known who find themselves gridlocked during the transition from high school or college to adult work have come from various directions. A lot of them, surprisingly, were impressive students - the golden boys and girls - academically successful, athletic, politically astute and attractive. Others suffered from neurodevelopmental breakdowns that made school a perpetual come-from behind battle. Many were the well-behaved and compliant kids who can meet expectations as long as they are explicitly framed.
In particular, Dr. Levine sees four predicaments that often set the stage for work-life unreadiness. The four predicaments are 1) Trapped in their teens, 2) Ones who were once revered, 3) Some who have gone astray and 4) Victims of brain neglect.
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