Think for Yourself!: Questioning Pressures to Conform
by Dr Sharon Presley
Ronin Press, USA $13.95, Europe $25, ISBN 1579510501
This is a small book, only 127 pages, padded out with photographs and quotations. The intention is to persuade readers to examine their own habits of thought using the techniques the author suggests. This is a worthy goal and, indeed, worthy describes the book very well. It reads like a school text for one of those personal development classes we had in my youth in America.
Despite the fact that I agreed with nearly everything the author said, I found myself put off by the book’s tone. It is preachy and lecturing. Perhaps it developed out of a series of public lectures or the scripts for selfhelp tapes. That’s what it feels like. The writing is very bland. Although this is hardly a sin, a book that seeks to convince readers of the need to make fundamental and profound changes to the way they think has got to inspire. Conformity, particularly for the young, offers security and appears desirable.
Presley’s writing, on its own, does not seem to me potent enough to counter this.
The publisher recommends the book for “youth groups, boys and girls clubs, church and community organizations”. It is as a resource, for stimulating discussion of the issues around what it means to think independently, that I believe this book has real value. It covers, albeit briefly, a huge range of issues, for example the role of experts, political and commercial manipulation and social pressure. It then offers suggestions for coping with these. A skilled teacher could compensate for what it lacks in depth.
But before anyone goes out to buy this book, the publishers have a job to do. In this age of the automatic spell-checker, it is inexcusable for a book to be published with such dreadful typos as teh for the. A good editor would not have hurt either.
