Water Lilies, by Claude Monet
Introduction
I hope you have been having a joy filled and restful summer. The Dowd’s are on our yearly retreat to Spokane, WA to celebrate the 4th of July with family. We always look forward to this time as it provides an opportunity for fellowship, fun, and rest. I usually bring a few books with me on this trip and I figured I’d share my list with you.
The List
I always choose a few books to get my ideas going for the next school year. We as a leadership team at Ambrose are typically reading the same cluster of books that revolve around a certain topic we are focusing in on. This year is a continuing look at the damaging effects of social media connected phones on children and young adults, as well as understanding how the rise of the therapeutic in parenting has affected Gen Z.
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
Haidt has done a lot of research on the link between anxiety and the rise of the internet connected smartphone on children and young adults. The effect of his book is that there is little doubt that social media has had a very negative impact on the development of Gen Z. Some of St. Augustine’s maxim applies here (we should plunder the Egyptians by taking the meat and leaving bones) since the author is not a Christian. He focuses primarily on the biological effects of internet connected devices on children but does not deal with any of the damage that is affecting the soul as well. We should be wise classical readers and see past those worldview defects to the point of truth in his argument, for there is a landslide of data for his thesis.
Take away? We should not give internet connected devices to our children before high school and no social media until the age of 16, because their brains (and souls) are simply not ready for it.
Bad Therapy by Abigail Shrier
Shrier looks at the rise of anxiety in young people as well but from another angle. There was a transition in parenting in the 1990’s to the therapeutic. The rise of the therapeutic language and the use of therapists for young people has skyrocketed since then. Gen Z is the most therapeutic generation in history. Before 1990 there was a general sense that suffering, difficulty, and hardship were part of life and in fact necessary to the healthy development of children. Today, there is a consensus in our culture that children should always be happy and never suffer anything at all. Like Haidt, Shrier tracks how this has become for our culture in general a harmful pattern for childhood development. Gen Z is the most anxious generation to date.
Take away? Children need doses of conflict, suffering, and failure in their development in order to learn how to deal with them at a greater level as an adult. Children who have learned how to overcome hardships are overall more happier and less anxious as opposed to those who are sheltered from them.
How to Read a Book: Advice for Christian Readers by Andrew David Naselli
Mrs. Dowd is almost finished with this one but has already given it a high recommendation. Mortimer Adler wrote a more famous book by the same name but he is an academic and his work is difficult to get through. Naselli does a great job of making Adler more accessible as well as pressing further in on how to be a wise Christian reader. This is just a great one that every classical parent should read as we have built our curriculum around cultivating thoughtful readers of great stories. As always, such curriculum is more powerful when parents are reading and discussing along with their children.
Bonus Nerdy Classical Recommendation
I’ll leave it there, but if you want a classical book for the summer, I am also reading The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. While such a work seems daunting, it actually isn’t hard to read one canto a day. It is about three pages and Dante is a great storyteller. This translation has excellent summaries of each canto as well as great footnotes to cue you in on all the people Dante meets in his journey. Our students read the Comedy in 11th grade. There is also a really great children's adaptation here that I have read with my kids.
Blessings,
Mr. Dowd