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Thursday, July 24, 2008

The Dumbest Generation?

Here's a pretty serious-minded video featuring Mark Bauerlein, the author of "The Dumbest Generation"

Any thoughts or comment?
Posted by Save The School at 11:20 AM

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great link; but know I'm torn.
My first thought, to borrow from 'The Simpsons' via Keith Olbermann is "Old man yells at cloud"...
My second thought, hardened both by years in Morrisville (and the selfish motives of the no tax seniors and their aging pawns on Boro Council and the School board) and antics of the frantic boomers of the Clinton campaign, is that I shouldn't trust anyone who can remember the JFK assassination.
That leaves me a very narrow band of people that I can trust.
I guess I'll hope that those under 30 can become enlightened as I've given up hope on the Boomers.

July 24, 2008 at 11:49 AM
Anonymous said...

I really get tweaked by these generation things. I mean come on, does anyone really believe that there's homogeneity among even all the kids in the same grade at the same school, let alone in an entire generation around the country or the world? I do think that computers are making people stupid. Knowledge was once extremely valuable. Scholars were valued for the things they knew. Now any tidbit of information is simply a mouse-click away. What this easy access produces is dangerous though, because it creates information without wisdom. We've also moved away from valuing proper communication. We are in an era of text messaging, where it seems more and more, people are forgetting how to be polite and how to be professional. Grammar is a dead science to most, and proper usage takes a back seat to kewl spellings.

I guess I'll just tie an onion to my belt and yell at some kids to get off my lawn.

July 24, 2008 at 4:16 PM
Anonymous said...

We R In uR BaSe SteELiN Ur WimIn. AlL YoUr bAsE R BeLoNg tO uS.

July 25, 2008 at 3:13 PM
Peter said...

This is an interesting, thought-provoking video. Like "generation excess", I am torn on the subject. I generally trust scientific studies, of which this seems to be one. However, I am not convinced that we are raising stupid people. Instead, I think they are set up to be smart in different ways.

It wasn't until my college years and beyond that I began to appreciate many of the things that he cites, literature, art, politics. I certainly wasn't a "complete citizen" in my teenage years -- I generally hung around with my friends, much like the kids today, only today they are doing it online. Does that make them (or me) stupid? (don't answer that :)

In terms of general knowledge, it is true that computers make it almost too easy to not have to know (or retain) certain information. Why remember it when you can look it up, right? And this is my point of being smart in a different way -- instead of being good at calculating math problems in their heads and recalling certain facts, all of that is now at your fingertips and this is what computers were made to do. However, have you ever tried giving a fairly simple new computer program (or just a computer) to someone OVER 30? In many cases, they either can't -- or won't -- learn to use it (I see this all the time where I work). This is what I mean. The younger generation may not be able to recall facts and figures but they can understand, use, and in many cases invent new things. Things that even 20 years ago were far out of reach. It is this kind of intelligence that has mapped out DNA. And this generation of "lazy", "ignorant" and "stupid" 20-somethings may someday cure cancer, invent clean energy, and develop things we can't even begin to imagine.

So, while I found this video very interesting, I also think it is unfair and one-sided.

That's my $0.02

July 26, 2008 at 6:17 PM

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