The “snowflake” generation has graduated, and they are taking root across our nation.
The “snowflake” rebellion and its juvenile temper tantrums are far from over. As the pampered and bubble-wrapped adolescents of Berkeley and Brown graduate, petulant progressivism is taking root in our nation’s corporations, courts, and even our Congress. A simple glance at the daily news reveals we now stand on the cliff of a cultural crisis where vitriol has replaced virtue, identity politics trump principle, character no longer matters, and elected leaders act more like spoiled children than mature adults.
In Grow Up, the nearly two-decades-long president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University and the national bestselling author of Not a Day Care, Dr. Everett Piper, presents common-sense solutions to the lunacy Americans face on the news, in the classroom, and from the mouths of elected officials in a powerful reminder that in the end, civilization relies on adults.
Everett Piper has had a lengthy career in college administration, serving as vice president for advancement at Grace College & Seminary in Indiana, dean of students at Greenville College in Illinois, and vice president for student development at Spring Arbor University in Michigan. From August 2002 until his retirement in May of 2019 he was President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University. He is a contributing columnist for The Washington Times and author of the viral op-ed, "This is Not a Daycare, It's a University." He hosts a podcast called The Rebellion and is a popular guest on various news programs and as a speaker. He and his wife Marci have two sons.
If you are a choir member who likes being preached to, a white middle class conservative church goer or feel that young people these days are just a bunch of whiney brats this is the book for you. You could get the same content from watching Fox News for awhile. Not everything the author promotes is bad it's the over uses of straw man argumentation that gets tiresome.
I would have expected a professed Christ follower to have a better understanding of the core value of grace instead of spending so much effort maligning those who don't agree with his preferences.
ReedIII Quick Review: Conservative religious based admonition to “Grow Up” by putting out effort to achieve and contribute to society and all mankind. Somewhat preachy, opinionated and judgmental. Promotes personal responsibility. States that objective truth is real and truth matters. Presents challenging political, educational, religious, child-rearing, leadership & informational ideas.
Dr. Piper gives great insight with an uplifting tilt to this book. If the advice in this book were taken to heart, we would see that being an adult is difficult but worthwhile.
Everett Piper does not start this book off on a good note. He starts listing off a laundry list of complaints he has about young people and I don't believe a lot of them are legitimate complaints. Things like not purchasing houses and not using topsheets were at the top of the list. I think a lot of these issues he has are simply because the generation graduating from college right now live in a different world than he grew up in and I don't think Piper understand that. These comments he makes at the beginning discredits the rest of what he has to say in the novel. He makes a lot of good points once he gets into the book though. He discusses why the family is important and how leaving childhood behind and moving into adulthood is a skill being lost on our youth. The biggest problem I had with the book is his definition of what leaving youth behind looks like is different in the world we live in today.
This was a DNF for me; I was hoping to learn about a generation of which I am not a member. While I may have been able to learn from the author, his use of derogatory and divisive terms caused me to stop reading in the first chapter.