The vulnerable generation [antikvár]

Author's Preface This is a very personal book. I am not a professional writer; still less am I a professional psychologist, sociologist or educationalist. I do not claim to be expert in anything at all, certainly not in the bringing up of the young. I suppose I am a pragma-tist; as far as I am concerned what works, works. For thirty years I have been a builder of bridges over the generation gap. They may be rather ramshackle and my techniques are probably out of date, but the odd thing is that the bridges seem to hold up, despite the winds of change and the tides of fashion. Not always, of course—for who can claim one hundred per cent success in so tricky an enterprise?—but, I like to think, more often than not. If I thought that I was alone in believing that there is a crying need in the world today for a return to 'old-fashioned' concepts of discipline, responsibility and goodness, I should never have had the hardihood to write this book. It is because I believe, in all humility, that what I have to say is in the hearts and minds of millions of ordinary people, who lack the means to say it aloud but would like to hear it shouted from the house-tops, that I have taken my courage in one hand, the other being occupied with holding my pen, and put my thoughts down on paper. I am resigned to being ridiculed by the trendy critics who reach for the vitriol at the very mention of the standards which I should like to see upheld and for whom decent is a pejorative word. I have not written this book for them and I am supremely uninterested in their opinions. If anything that I have said strengthens the will and hand of other patient builders and gives them fresh courage to continue laying stone on stone, however often the mockers and corrupters pull their bridges down, I shall be more than satisfied. ^ Felixstowe, May igyo.