The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future(Or, Don 't Trust Anyone Under 30)

by Mark Bauerlein

Book Overview

THIS SHOCKING, SURPRISING ENTERTAINING ROMP INTO THE INTELLECTUAL NETHER REGIONS OF TODAY'S UNDER-THIRTY SET REVEALS THE DISTURBING AND, ULTIMATELY, INCONTROVERTIBLE TRUTH- CYBERCULTURE IS TURNING US... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1585427128
• Release Date: May 2009
• Publisher: TarcherPerigee
• Length: 253 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

TLDNR

Is there a cliff notes or audio book version available? This book seem awfully long and full of words. I get lost after the fourth page.

Revealing

I knew I wanted to read this after I could tell it irritated the education establishment and the ignorant yet arrogant youth. The truth hurts but you cannot see how we're falling behind other nations and defend what we have in our society. We're told that if we just get all kids laptops they'll be Einsteins. Meanwhile the kids not only DO NOT read, many of the them CANNOT read.

As a card-carrying member of the dumbest generation, I endorse this book.

Mark Bauerlein begins his book by quoting an article about the frenzied, high-stakes world of American high school students. Students are pushed to succeed like never before, forced to spend their every waking minute in intense studies. Parents and teachers lean over their shoulders, brutally forcing them to ignore all leisure activity and focus solely on the goal of college. It all adds up to a nonstop barrage of academics that consumes are childrens lives, stresses them out, and even ruins their health. The only problem with this analysis is that it's completely wrong. As anyone who's been in a classroom recently can testify, today's students have very light workloads. They refuse to do homework. They simply won't study. They care about their social lives, not about academics. This is the reality of the situation. If anecdotes won't prove the point, real research will. Bauerlein provides that research, citing multiple, large studies by universities, government agencies, and other reliable sources. The results are clear. We have raised a nation that lacks basic knowledge of math, science, history, English, foreign language, and civics. Today's young people are not only weak academically, but also unable to use their leisure time productively. Bauerlein spends one chapter establishing that fact. The rest of the book is spent shooting down the various responses to it. Response one is that technology inevitably makes our kids smarter. Yet the facts just don't justify it. America has spent seventy billion dollars to bring technology into the classroom, yet our students continue to fall behind. Schools in other countries remain focused on the basics and easily outperform us. For all the political jabber, there's no reason to put so much faith in computerized classrooms. Response two is that our children are shifting to a new type of learning, where the old rules simply don't apply. Kids don't need to know Newton's Laws or the Bill of Rights any more, they just need to know how to look things up online. This theory is a recipe for disaster, as Bauerlein points out. The human mind must think and decide with the information it has. The mere presence of information online doesn't guarantee that people will use that information. Moreover, technology by its very nature works against deep-seated intelligence by breeding short attention spans. This is not merely an old person ranting about all this new stuff. A research group at Apple has spent years researching how people process online information, and they confirm the results. Response three is the most sinister. Some commentators don't really mind that our kids are getting stupider. They view education itself as oppressive, and think that new tech-centered living will be more liberating for humanity. While few would say so in as many words, many people have allowed this attitude to creep into their thinking. Bauerlein calls this "the betrayal of the mentors" and he hits i

The Current Prisoners In Plato's Cave

This is an astonishingly insightful book. The fact that it has not so far garnered avalanches of commendation on this site suggests to me the dunces of our age, comfortable with the present scheme of things, may be in confederacy against it. Its thesis is that the generations since the 60's have become increasingly self-absorbed and therefore sadly unfit to maintain a democratic society. For requisite intellectual combat, the young of our time lack both a liberal education and civic knowledge, essentials for the preservation and advance of the American experiment in government. The villain here, as Bauerlien presents it, is manifestly NOT technology itself. He is no Luddite. Rather, he pillories the increasingly eager self-absorption of the young in mere private social life, and the peculiar eagerness of Boomer mentors to approve such juvenility. Technology itself, after all, does not require that the young text message DURING college classes or fake bathroom emergencies to take cell phone calls. For too many of them, the highest and only reality is peer group interaction. The rest is blah, blah, blah. In his early chapters, Bauerlien happily provides even more hard evidence of the mediocrity of current youth culture than the most strictly defensive parent, teacher or journalist might require to become alarmed. In his summarizing words, "a parent, teacher or journalist who doesn't see the problem would have to be blind." The young these days, by and large, are ignorant of beneficent tradition. Even the pen of a Jonathan Swift would be challenged to report on them, since what he could satirize as worst case behavior in his time has become pretty standard in ours. He mocked, it will be remembered, several town wits referring to an obscure author called Homer and had them in dispute as to whether there had actually ever been any ancient writers or not, the present moment being all. Bauerlein, I'm happy to report, does not follow his scientific analysis with a plea of impotence. He argues, instead, that adults in all spheres must speak out to reverse the order of things and encourage youth to see that adulthood rather than a Peter-Pan like endless adolescence is the desideratum. The young, by nature, do desire to be older. One has only to ask 5 1/2 year olds their age and they'll chime 6, to a person. That 25 year olds will say they're 21 is the greater problem in our time. Freeing the young from Plato's cave has always been an uphill battle. Are there adults today, Bauerlien asks, who are willing to take the risks?

I weep for the future

Sixty-three percent of test takers couldn't find Iraq on a map??? Fifty-two percent of high school seniors picked Germany, Japan, or Italy as allies of the United States in World War II? Are you SERIOUS? A well-documented, reasoned look at America's Dumbest Generation. The author pulls no punches. He isn't out to insult or deride -- rather, his points serve to highlight and emphasize the severity of the problem. Highly recommend. In later chapters, the author delves into how "The Dumbest Generation" came to be. One point stands out -- the contemptuous view of history and tradition. The author documents a case of a young aspiring artist who not only does not know who Michaelangelo or Rembrandt are -- BUT DOES NOT CARE. I can only take this book in doses before having to put it down. The author talks about how today's society is more focused on information retrieval versus knowledge formation. He demonstrates how today's society can multi-task and do a lot without actually learning a lot. Test results are sprinkled throughout to support the author's points. An insightful, eye-opening book.