Posted on 01/15/2009 6:47:54 PM PST by SeekAndFind
With his soft voice and unassuming manner, Mark Bauerlein seems an unlikely prospect for penning an ostentatious book like The Dumbest Generation. The title immediately brings to mind the Greatest Generation, the idol of 20th century American history that weathered the Great Depression, beat the Nazis at Normandy, and brought us swing music. But the generation that Bauerlein writes of is very different. Ignorant of politics and government, art and music, prose and poetry, the Dumbest Generation is content to turn up its iPods and tune out the realities of the adult world. It is brash, pampered, young, and dumb -- and content to stay that way.
Or so argues Bauerlein, an Emory University English professor and baby boomer. It would be an easy accusation for my generation (I'm 23) to ignore. After all, the fogies have always railed against the ignorance and excesses of youth. What's the point of reading a book or going to a museum in the age of Wikipedia? Why bother knowing who the Speaker of the House is or voting for president when the only vote that matters is the hit count on my latest YouTube video? Being able to locate Mexico on a world map or name the Axis powers during World War II won't help me score a date on Friday night or get tapped for the high school football team.
But something is different this time. In past generations, the young had fewer opportunities to fritter away their lives. Two-parent households and a generally religious culture made sure of it. Today, half of teens grow up in single-parent households and secularism dominates society. Undergirding that is the digital culture, the 24/7 rush of information and entertainment that young adults thrive on. Bauerlein says it's a rush that's killing their intellectual development.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Yeah, we should leave smart to China and the EU s/
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
~SOCRATES (469–399 B.C.)"
The idiots will drag the smart ones down.
&&&
Indeed. I encountered this many times in the classroom.
Judge Smeales
They don't give a ##ck. As long as they've got their little Myspace page, their little earphones, their little insignificant and meaningless world --- who cares?
Suppose that’s a nice positive spin on it...
Hell given the chance most generations is like that. 90% of kids don’t want to learn fractions and read Moby Dick be it 1955 when they was into hot rods,rock and roll and drive in movies or today.
The big difference was that the baby boomers had to learn things in school or else. Now that the baby boomers are the teachers, principals, and professors they have let the education standards slide in the name of self esteem and other education fads. These kids isn’t going to be picking up this stuff on their own, they have to be educated.
This generation isn’t dumb it is ignorant.
Maybe the realization among some people that we needed a book like that (e.g. a dietary supplement because our regular diet was no longer balanced and adequate) was the beginning of the end.
Richard Vernon: You think about this: when you get old, these kids - when *I* get old - they’re going to be running the country.
Carl: Yeah.
Richard Vernon: Now this is the thought that wakes me up in the middle of the night. That when I get older, these kids are going to take care of me.
Carl: I wouldn’t count on it.
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Well sad to say but anymore when I go into Barnes and Noble or other bookstores I wonder if this was what it was like during the decline of the Roman Empire.
Every year the number of well written interesting books declines in my opinion. Hell the fiction authors of just ten or twenty years ago seems like giants compared with now and I knew that the Steven King’s and Tom Clancy’s of that era was just hacks compared Steinbeck and others of earlier eras.
As for kids reading newspapers, most adults have given up on the newspapers. The typical newspaper of say the 1970’s read like Shakespeare compared with the trash that is called journalism nowadays.
I absolutely agree. All these Boomer, Joneser, Gen X generalizations annoy the heck out of me. Studying demographic cohorts is important, and a range of verifiable data can be ascertained, eg, educational degrees, income, marriages and divorces, etc. But it’s laughable to apply vague labels — greatest, dumbest — to large groups of people just because they share a range of birth dates.
It must be understood as pertaining to a bell curve within each population group. I’m neither Greatest Generation nor Boomer, but the former are my heroes and heroines, my striven-for ideal. So I’m living Gen-X proof of your point, though your point assumes understanding the labels in too strict a sense (i.e. EVERY SINGLE PERSON in group x behaves y.)
Not really. Digging has become powered. Even small tasks are better, quicker done with small Japanese made diggers.
Don’t ask me, I’m ‘batin’...
I would have to say that if the generation in question is the dumbest, it’s the fault of the boomer generation the most selfish. They ruined the culture, the schools and the media and modeled self service above all other attributes. Tune in, turn on and drop out has been passed down as a moral standard, why would anyone be surprised at the outcome we see.
Not what I said. I said we need more “moral” etc than just “smart”. Plenty smart people are anything from smart-ASS to murderous mass-killing thugs.
Of course, we could be confusing “smart” with “knowledgeable” again. I think the article refers more to “ignorant” than “stupid”.
It’s okay. They don’t know much, but they have high self-esteem.
Sorry, I just have to ask about your English education - by Boomers?
Idiocracy is here 500 years early
Oh yes, 1 of the many books my uncle recommended. Never actually read it, but I did skim the list it had in the back when at a library. Really scary.
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