By Edie Humiston
For The Independent

For those who read the book and feel insulted, refer to Rule 21: "You're offended? So what? No, really. So what?"

If you feel statements in the book aren't fair, refer to Rule 1: "Life is not fair. Get used to it."

Sykes is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a journalist and a radio and television host at WTMJ in Milwaukee. His previous books include "A Nation of Victims," "Dumbing Down our Kids," "Profscam," "The End of Privacy" and "The Hollow Men." He and his wife, Janet, have three children.

Sykes' 50 rules originated from an initial 10 used in a television commentary in the mid-1990s and have been erroneously attributed to Bill Gates, Paul Harvey or Ann Landers, according to www.snopes.com.

The author's intention is "to help prepare young people to be responsible, competent, confident, self-reliant, independent, realistic individuals who are armed with the inner resources and the habits of mind to resist the blather and blandishments of the world they are about to enter."

While teens might need a good dose of reality, area teachers are a little more forgiving with younger children. In elementary school, teachers assume a positive attitude.

"In education, we have to have the attitude that every child can learn and that every child can be successful," said Brad Wolfe, principal of Newell Elementary School. "For elementary kids that we deal with, every kid has something that they're good at. Every kid can be successful. Every kid can perform well at school, no matter what their home life or what they're dealing with.

"That's what we have to believe in when kids come in the building that every kid can be successful. We like to accentuate the positive at our schools and have the kid feel like school is a safe place, school is a place to learn, it's a fun place to be in."

Red ink is not used by teachers in elementary school.

"Our teachers don't use that (red ink)," Wolfe said. "It is an expectation of teachers that we want to give positive feedback to students and kids."

There are no percentages, numbers or letter grades given.

"For elementary, we've gone away from the letter grade and percentages," Wolfe said. "We've gone to having language of proficient, advanced, beginning, developing. It's more of, what does the child need to be proficient? It's a process of improving your skills in order to meet the curriculum needs of the school district."

Does that approach prepare middle school or high school students to deal with adversity?

"The modern bubble-wrap mentality assumes that children are so frail and easily bruised that they have to be insulated from life," Sykes writes in his introduction. "No losing, no disappointments, no harsh reality checks. But like a child who grows up in a bubble without developing any immunities to the outside world, a child raised in bubble wrap is not prepared for the symptoms of life: failure, frustration and having to make choices tougher than the color of their new iPod sleeve."

"There seems like all this stuff does go on," said Dylan Dreher, sophomore at Northwest High School, "and kids out there think, 'Well, I'm all that,' and then the teachers back that up. They don't actually tell them that the universe is all around them, but you know."

Rule 2: "The real world won't care as much as your school does about your self-esteem. It'll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself."

There are teachers who try to correct students' bad behavior but not many, Dreher said.

"A lot of teachers don't do that," he said. Most teachers give warning after warning, without consequences.

Letter grades are given in middle and high school.

"There's always competition in school with grades," Dreher said in disagreement with Rule 9, which reads, "Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn't."

"There are special things you get if you do the best on a test. They still have valedictorians. They still have the honor roll. Then you've got lettering for sports, too. A lot of people work to get those letters."

Rule 46, "Check on the guinea pig in the basement," reminds us not to put things off.

"Sometimes we do put stuff off," Dreher said. "It's like, whatever, it won't hurt anybody. But if you do, you can miss out on a lot of stuff. Like when you have grandparents sitting in a nursing home or friends in the hospital, waiting for a call. If you don't talk to them as much as you should, or at all, you're just going to miss out when they're gone. You're not going to know what to do. You never really talked to them. It's like you never said goodbye."

Sykes considers "50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School" as a user's manual for the real world. While some may find some of the of the rules offensive, others have valuable advice.

"I think kids should read it," Dreher said. "It might actually help a lot of people. There's a lot of good points."