6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A profound documentation of our human birthright, October 25, 2008
This review is from: From Magical Child to Magical Teen: A Guide to Adolescent Development (Paperback)
From Magical Child to Magical Teen is major step in the documentation of the overwhelming potential hidden within the human heart. Author Joseph Chilton Pearce has spent a lifetime developing the evidence for our magnificent human birthright, which few of us achieve and many do not understand. Many of my associates consider Pearce to be the world's number one interdisciplinary authority on human development. From Magical Child to Magical Teen is another step in Pearce's documentation of the barriers in most cultures to the unfolding of our inherent human potentials and gifts. Pearce began his literary endeavors over 40 years ago with Crack in the Cosmic Egg
The Crack in the Cosmic Egg: New Constructs of Mind and Reality, followed by Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg
Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg: Split Minds & Meta-Realities, best seller Magical Child
Magical Child (Plume), and Magical Child Matures (republished as From Magical Child to Magical Teen)
Magical Child Matures: 2. Each of these books sought to explicate the mystery of what it could mean to be truly human. The greatest challenge to our understanding of who we are is the effect of our culture, and Pearce has carefully documented the negative effects of many of our major institutions - education, medicine, churches, the television, and media in general - which over time have become self serving rather than serving of humankind. Because we are all products of our culture, the truth about our culture is often very confusing and frightening. Readers of Joseph Chilton Pearce will confront this resistance in the process of reading his works. From Magical Child to Magical Teen is not a how-to-do-it book offering easy answers. Rather, it challenges us to the very core of our understanding of who we are. One reviewer of this book took Pearce's statement that "by 1980, sixty to seventy percent of all American children under the age of four were in day-care centers for periods up to twelve hours a day, seven days a week", and then concluded by stating that "to imply that 60 - 70% are in day-care for 72 hours a week is just irresponsible and misleading." Our resistance to truth is often the source of logical fallacies. Stating, for example, that a thing is occurring "up to" a certain limit in no way implies that all occurrences are at that limit. From my own experience of watching our culture, daycare is one of the most destructive forces in our society because of its profound negative effect on child development, and Pearce recognized over 30 years ago that changes in the nurturing of children were creating catastrophic damage to the human species. This damage has been thoroughly explored by Pearce in his other books: The Bond of Power (republished as Spiritual Initiation and the Breakthrough of Consciousness)
Spiritual Initiation and the Breakthrough of Consciousness: The Bond of Power, Evolution's End
Evolution's End: Claiming the Potential of Our Intelligence, The Biology of Transcendence
The Biology of Transcendence: A Blueprint of the Human Spirit, and The Death of Religion and the Rebirth of Spirit
The Death of Religion and the Rebirth of Spirit: A Return to the Intelligence of the Heart. When From Magical Child to Magical Teen was initially published as Magical Child Matures, it received rave reviews "A rich book.... I hope it will help people to open the narrow aperture of their frightened, logical, rational minds." - Frederick Leboyer. "Brilliant.... This is the provocative human synthesis we've been waiting for." - George Leonard. The future of civilization truly requires that we use the help of Pearce and others to "open the narrow aperture".
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12 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
huge disappointment, May 27, 2008
This review is from: From Magical Child to Magical Teen: A Guide to Adolescent Development (Paperback)
after a confusing and wordy intro, this book had a fantastic opening paragraph that gave me great hope for the pages to come:
in the summer of my sixth year a great expectation arose within me; something overwhelming was pending. i was up each morning at dawn, rushed to the top of dorchester hill, a treeless knoll of grass and boulders, to await the sun, my heart pounding. a kind of numinous expectancy loomed everywhere about and within me. a precise shift of brain function was afoot; my biological system was preparing to shift my awareness from the pre-logical operations of the child to the operational logic of later childhood, and an awesome new dimension of life was ready to unfold. instead, i was put in school that fall. all year i sat at that desk, stunned, wondering at such a fate, thinking over and over: something was supposed to happen, and it wasn't this.
unfortunately, the rest of the book was seriously downhill from there.
people occasionally mention to me that i only write positive book reviews. well, i suppose that's because i try to be careful about what i read; so i'm pre-selecting books i expect i'll enjoy. my pre-selection abilities failed me on this one.
robert chilton pierce is a bit of a guru to the waldorf crowd (my kids attend a waldorf school). part of me can see why: he's a spiritual person, and approaches education and development with an assumption that children and teens are spiritual also. and i can dig that; of course, i agree with that. a book about adolescent development that acknowledges, even embraces, the spirit, would be a welcomed read. but the problems with this book (from where i stand) are so far reaching, it's hardly even worth listing them all. ok, just a few:
1. i was ticked -- actually, pissed -- that the subtitle of the book is "a guide to adolescent development", but the book is anything but. i kept soldiering on in my reading, waiting for the part about teenagers. it never really came. somewhere a bit over halfway through the book he wrapped up his summary of childhood development, and i thought to myself, "finally! more than halfway through, and he's finally getting to adolescent development." i was wrong. the book turns to development (of the spirit, kinda -- see below) that could take place in adolescence, or adulthood, or anytime an individual chooses to self-actualize (my sarcasm).
2. it's wordy and convoluted and clunky and wanders all over the place.
3. the author uses overstatement and generalization liberally, and regularly present his opinions as fact. one little example of hundreds:
by 1980, sixty to seventy percent of all american children under the age of four were in day-care centers for periods up to twelve hours a day, sevene days a week.
ok, hold on there. yes, some parents overuse day care, to the detriment of their children. and, this was much more true "by 1980' than it would be "by 2007' (see next point). but to imply that 60 - 70% are in day-care for 72 hours a week is just irresponsible and misleading information presentation (and irresponsible editing, on the part of the publisher).
4. this book was originally published in 1985 under a different title. in the "publisher's preface" to this re-titled 2006 edition, the publisher states that the book was published before its time originally, and is only now truly timely. well, that may or may not be true in terms of people swallowing pierce's buddhist take on development, but it doesn't change the fact that the book sounds extremely dated, like it was, well, written in the early 80s. i regularly felt developmental findings and cultural trends of the past 25 years were being ignored.
ok, i wrote more words than i meant to.
that was a great opening paragraph, though, huh?
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