"A Tribe Apart"

Paper Summary:

This paper explores Patricia Hersch's 1998 text, "A Tribe Apart: A Journey into the Heart of American Adolescence" and outlines the central beliefs and assumptions which inform her work. It also considers the corrective action Hersch believes must be taken if certain arresting (and deeply troubling) trends in society are to be halted. Finally, the paper also considers how successfully Hersch's text serves as a example of how adults and adolescents can learn to communicate with one another by the former allowing the latter to speak for themselves.

From the Paper:

"At its core, Hersch's book is about the idea that children are paying the price for the social un-mooring of the 1960s and 1970s. That is to say, many of "today's" children - Hersch's book was released in 1998 - are growing up without the support and supervision of adults and are therefore not instructed in how to grapple successfully with the challenges and responsibilities of school, social life, even participation in a democratic society. Hersch proceeds onward to note - and here she draws upon a comment by Peter L. Benson of the Search Institute - that America has somehow forgotten what is necessary for the raising of healthy, productive children (12). In a real sense, young people today are becoming a "tribe apart" because the harried adults of the 1990s and 2000's are finding it difficult to incorporate the supervision and counseling of young people into their lives. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Hersch, Patricia. A Tribe Apart: A Journey into the Heart of American Adolescents. New York: Ballantine Publishing Group, 1998.

More papers on "A Tribe Apart":

• Book Review # 130541 : "A Tribe Apart": A Book Review of Patricia Hersch's Text"
• Analytical Essay # 130127 : "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe"
• Analytical Essay # 5317 : "Achebe's "Things Fall Apart"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: