Book Review: Never Enough by Jennifer Breheny Wallace
Thomas Merton aptly noted, we may spend our whole life climbing the ladder of success, only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.
When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do About It, written by Jennifer Breheny Wallace, invites society to deliberate the wall our collective ladder of success is leaning on.
Through extensive research, including 6,000 family interviews, and insights from experts Wallace exposes the noxious, hyper-competitive climate that is crushing a significant portion of our youth, all under the guise of preparing them for successful adulthood. Wallace explores high-performing schools and their stakeholders, the flawed assumptions possessed and propagated, and the resulting consequences. Throughout her investigation Wallace also highlights parents, community leaders, and schools that offer more constructive, fruitful ways of guiding young people towards maturity.
Driven to ensure happy, successful adult lives for their children, parents have professionalized childhood, created high-stakes pressure filled environments where children are regarded as an “investment with an early, expected ROI” which tends to mean admittance to a highly rejective college. Operating from this perspective the quest to get into the right college has become a soul-draining endeavor, nevertheless it must be endured to secure a child’s place in a competitive, unpredictable world. Wallace pushes back on parental fears and insecurities, scarcity mindset, status safeguarding, hyper-competition, radical individualism, and the pervasive grind culture and urges adults to take action. She notes, “Instinct compels parents to do right by their kids, but where does ‘right’ turn into something else?” (9)
The compulsion to do right makes a wrong turn when children are explicitly or implicitly taught that their identity and meaning are narrowly reduced to extrinsic markers such as grades, trophies, resumes, social media followers, and their college brand not their intrinsic worth. (9) In ordered to feel valued, children feel they must “audition for it, work for it, and keep earning it” in the home, in school, and in the world. (53) This unrelenting, chronic stress of high achievement is as much of a risk factor as trauma, poverty, and discrimination when it comes to well-being.
Furthermore, teens feel they only matter or are worthy of love if they’re successful. While success is a prime motivation, Wallace’s research reveals that parents desire more for their children including “happiness, having a sense of purpose, and being a compassionate member of society.” (13) Many parents have a longing for their children that they can’t fully imagine or articulate and can only allude to; what classical educators refer to as eudaimonia.
In the book’s eight chapters, Wallace empathizes with parents, while she also challenges them to reexamine expectations and goals for childhood. Readers will encounter heartbreaking and inspiring vignettes that should cause them to pause and diagnose their own ways of thinking and acting. The resources addendum and discussion guide are nothing less than a call to action for parents, educators, and community leaders, full of practical applications.
Throughout her investigation, Wallace explores some of the perennial human questions from the Great Tradition whether she realizes it or not, when she asks: What constitutes self-worth? What does a life of purpose and meaning look like? What role do values play in education? What is a healthy definition of success? Why are human limits worth honoring? Why should society reject erroneous, extrinsically based identities? Why does genuine community and collaboration supersede competition? What are the obligations of adults to the next generation? What does it mean to matter?
Wallace models a spirit of inquiry and reflection that drive the liberal arts tradition. No wonder she is intrigued by Saint Ignatius High School in Cleveland. She applauds the school for its values and mission, and delivering an education with a deep, meaningful purpose grounded in healthy human formation and the acquisition of virtue. Thus, urging parents to consider more than test scores, college matriculations, and job security as the sole purpose of education. The kind of education offered at institutions like Saint Ignatius foster a sense of mattering, which is an antidote to toxic achievement culture.
The explanation of mattering, which is foundational to Wallace’s thesis, anchors chapter three. Mattering is multifaceted, including the essential human need to receive unconditional love and to know one is valued and adds value by contributing to the community. Children feel secure when their “worth is absolute and their value to us never fluctuates.” (58) Mattering allows children to discover who they really are and their place in the world. Just as Athena did for Telemachus.
The beauty of the liberal arts is that it supplies imagination, stories, and language that uplift ideas like mattering and places those ideas in the deeper human context, an expansive terrain of other ideas and thinkers over the ages. Those of us in the classical community know that a liberal arts education typically seeks to do this through “seven distinct areas: intellectual, moral, aesthetic, spiritual, physical, practical, and social. Students are formed in these ways while they are led to pursue and participate in four transcendent goods (the true, good, beautiful, and holy) and three immanent goods (the healthy, beneficial, and neighborly).” See Principia: A Journal of Classical Education
Wallace’s investigation and conclusions dance around the transcendental goods and squarely address the immanent goods. Many of her readers would agree with her concluding remarks,
…at the core we all really want the same thing for our kids. When we are no longer around to guide them, we want them to live a good life, to have deep, life-sustaining connections, to feel the joy of living a life of meaning, and to leave this world a little better than they found it. We want them to feel valued by those around them and to help others in their family, in their schools, in their communities to feel valued as well. What we want for them is to live a life that truly matters. (230)
Her sentiments are reminiscent of the poem attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson entitled Success. I assume she’s read it. I wonder whether Wallace has delved into works like Nichomachean Ethics, The Republic, or The Abolition of Man. A classical curriculum, with a foundation in Great Books, wrestles with the essential human questions and imparts wisdom that is desperately needed today and would provide added weight to Wallace’s recommendations. Never Enough provides initial clarity and focus to this current crisis and moves the conversation in the right direction by seeking to fix what is broken in our culture and suggesting ways to be a good human.
The telos and praxis of classical education serve as a healthy counterpoint to the waywardness and vapidity of progressive, utilitarian education that has contributed to the toxic achievement culture Wallace seeks to heal. Classical education is not thee answer to society’s distorted view of achievement, but it does offer answers and hope. And, classical educators bear witness to the fact that student flourishing, healthy maturation, and fruitful adult life is attainable.
This doesn’t imply that classical communities are immune from toxic achievement culture, in fact they might have a propensity towards it. Parents at classical schools often hold many of the same fears and worries, but these lie dormant until their student enters high school. Some high school students show the signs of wear and tear produced by the grind culture. Members of the classical movement should read Never Enough to determine if toxic achievement culture has crept through their doors and if so, apply some of Wallace’s helpful suggestions. Schools should consider utilizing the book discussion questions to guide conversation. Never Enough prompts readers towards the examined life, something the liberal arts tradition is accustomed to.
While modern-day, well-intended parents strive to guide their children, they have lost their way.Perhaps like Dante, who lost his way in The Divine Comedy and was redirected by noble guides, society too might be able to find its way to a healthier path with the classical community as a guide. Perhaps classical education could help society move the ladder of success to a different kind of wall eudaimonia. Maybe the sequel to the next book might be, It is Good: When the Quest for Eduaimonia is Enough.
