When I Am 21

Book excerpt: When I Am 21 is an attempt to capture the spirit of the students with whom I worked in residential placement. The student papers are filled with hope and despair, sadness and happiness, poignancy, honesty, and deep longing. My hope is that this book will contribute to efforts towards working with these students to provide them with what they need, a top-quality education that offers academic pursuits, and especially for the majority of students, vocational training and interpersonal skills as essential parts of the curriculum. "It is impossible to look at these student wishes and not be impressed by the desire to work. Work is the basis of community. It involves the giving and taking essential to human transactions, the fulfillment of wants and needs, the reciprocity of rights and responsibilities, and the culmination - hopefully - of an educational process that allows students to identify their interests and skills and to choose a job suitably commensurate with such." (page 49). "I find most noteworthy those wishes that refer to personal virtues ('be brave', 'will listen', 'to still pray') and those that refer to a world outside of and bigger than ourselves ('a world without violence', 'peace on earth', 'help younger children to read', 'everyone will stop killing animals', 'will help the needy')." (page 146) "Peer relations are generally the greatest single indicator both of social/emotional health and happiness/sadness for individuals throughout society. Peer relations is the arena wherein questions of autonomy, maturity, morality, virtue and interpersonal satisfaction come together. Love interests encompass the spiritual, the emotional and the physical." (page 197)