Mark Bauerlein, an English professor from Emory University, thinks millennials are stupid. Bauerlein is the author of "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future," which argues that Americans -- specifically those younger than 30 -- are squandering the numerous opportunities for knowledge and culture that are available today.
This finger-pointing really got to me. "Dumbest" generation? What the heck?
Bauerlein outlines the thesis of his new book in a New York Post op-ed. He writes:
For all their reputed savviness and worldliness, just about every measure of the knowledge and literacy of teens and young adults produces abysmal results. On the last National Assessment of Education Progress History and Civics exams, two-thirds of high school seniors couldn't explain a photo of a theater whose portal read: "Colored Entrance." Forty-five percent of them couldn't make sense of a sample ballot. Last month's NAEP writing scores showed only one in four high school seniors reaching proficiency...
It doesn't make sense, but the evidence is incontrovertible. Young people are tracking a course into ignorance and lassitude. The combination of opportunity and ignorance marks a paradox, and one thing explains it. It stems from the central fact of their leisure lives - ironically, the very thing claimed to boost their knowledge and sharpen their wits: the Digital Universe... The Digital Age has changed the threshold of adulthood. So caught up in social life, young Americans are aging, but not maturing. They are more adept with tools but less aware of moral meanings and historical backgrounds.
Bauerlein's campaign enraged many Gen. Yers and Gen. Y allies. They responded and initially, I was tempted to do the same. I started writing a post about how resourceful is the new smart. Although Bauerlein's Web site claims that the book is not an exercise in "intergenerational grousing," I was going to show that in fact, this is exactly what it is. These days, smarts are not about how many 19th century poems you can recite, it's about how you go about finding the answers to relevant questions. Right?
Maybe not.
For many millennials, resourcefulness trumps book smarts. That's why we think of authority in terms of what people pay attention to, not what your degree is in. We think that modern media tools like RSS feeds, blogs, search engines etc. can help us develop expertise overnight. If you start focusing on a topic, you can become an authority, and to some degree, this attitude is reinforced by the world around us. When CNN wants a media industry analyst, it wouldn't be unheard of for them to use Brian Stelter, the 2007 college grad. who started a blog about cable news.
I wanted to explain this ideology and use it to discredit Bauerlein's perspective, but I realized that it just proves his point. This belief that the right tools will give us all the answers shows that we're interested in information not knowledge. Our solution to the problem of information overload has been to master ways to navigate some of it -- not to absorb, internalize or understand any of it, as this PBS documentary shows.
Placing a lot of emphasis on resourcefulness isn't a bad thing, and Gen. Y definitely has a comparative advantage here. But are we truly resourceful if we're not mastering some of the basics about history, language etc? The quality of our answers is most certainly affected by our understanding of where to look. Maybe we need to spend more time learning where to look rather than figuring out how to do it.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Generation Why Know?
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8 comments:
I recently took a class in which I learned about a concept known as generational entelechy (the concept actually extends all the way back to the days of Aristotle, but it has a lot of modern day relevance).
If I explain it correctly, a generational entelechy refers to the way in which you come to define your world. This typically happens during your critical phase in life, between the ages of 15 and 25.
Gen Y is going through this critical phase right now, in which we define our world and how to use it. Unlike any other generation before us, we are being constantly bombarded by technological innovations and information from the web; a tool we love and will continue to use.
I think Bauerlein's argument breaks down right in his title, "The Dumbest Generation." We're not dumb, we're just using our world in different ways, ways that Bauerlein couldn't understand, because he's probably just an outdated model living in a world that's moving too fast for him.
I say, so what if we don't pass your history tests. Millenials are making their own history every day.
I LOVE this post. Well, I am pissed off, but I love you for bringing attention to this. I frankly, am very resourceful, if I do say so myself.
"But are we truly resourceful if we're not mastering some of the basics about history, language etc?"
Personally, I find that the more background I have, the better I'm able to place information in a relevant context. Though it hasn't done much for my job prospects, I've very happy to have done a liberal arts degree, which sampled the greatest books written over the last 3000 years (as chosen by our professors).
I think that the greatest skills or subjects we can learn in school now are a) critical thinking, b) how to access and evaluate information, and c) develop a context or framework for future information.
I enjoyed this article a lot, as Generation Y has only recently come under such scrutiny.
What I love most about the vitrol of Boomers, Joneses, and Xers is the irony of where the Millennial generation's malaise came from.
Them.
But this article brings up one of the most distressing realities Gen Yers are only beginning to understand:
Yes, our parents may not believe we're a competent generation; and yes, we may believe this is a fault of their ability to educate the lot of us properly, but now that we've fallen outside their purview it's up to us to reconcile the skills we've learned about the new world with the old.
This is partially why there isn't a major cultural movement on the part of the Gen Y-ers; we've been brought up in a culture that encouraged sub-culture and niche culture to such a degree that unified societal movement seemed quaint and beside the point.
But we were young and had free time, and now we're old enough to get even a fuzzy glimpse of what the years ahead will hold for us as humans: we too will grow old, find ourselves outdated, be handed the keys to the kingdom, mismanage a few things and be exonerated for it by our children, and then have to watch them go through the same thing, well, we're starting to realize that all this ability to separate, document, and quantify our culture and knowledge is going to be our primary legacy.
Thank you, Jaclyn, for bringing this up. The old guard may have their turn to beat the drums of age and decry their offsprings goals, talents, and merits; but we will sit up and take notice.
And those of us who truly listen will change.
Thank you all for stopping by. I appreciate the thoughtful comments.
I am traveling for the rest of the week and will have limited Internet access, so please excuse me if I'm not so responsive!
Miriam, glad you njoyed the post. I think you are very resourceful too :)
Julie, those are greta goals for schools, but I think that it's so much more challenging to teach those skills in this increasingly wired world. Definitely take a look at the PBS doc. I linked, it addresses some of these issues.
Anonymous, great point about personal responsibility. I'm interested in what you said about social movements. Is a major Gen. Y social movement now brewing, what might it look like?
It's sad that Bauerlein seemingly judges a generation on their knowledge of history and civics, along with how many of them are proficient with the written word. For the record, I'm a Boomer and the parent of two Gen Y teenagers. I also work with a few Gen Ys. What they may lack in the knowledge Bauerlein claims they make up for in their ability to gather and synthesize information, resourcefulness, and analytical thinking.
They also value their leisure and family time over spending many hours at the office. What's wrong with that? Many of them have seen how their parents' over-devotion to work made it hard on family life when they were growing up. No matter what generation you're part of, you learn from previous generations and try to right some of their wrongs.
Thanks for the post! It's a subject that can stoke passion in many people.
What really worries me is that we don't seem to be learning much from the supposed faults of Gen Y. We're still shoveling tech at Gen Z children in much the same fashion - only in greater quantities. We're still mired down in the idea that we need to teach children to be technologically proficient, rather than intellectually proficient.
How much bearing will it have on their future that your Kindergarten-age children know how to use PowerPoint? How much more efficient use of their time & the increasingly-limited educational resources would it be to teach them instead to be critical thinkers and capable problem-solvers?
We should ensure that they learn that the application of technology without adequate thought of the ethical implications is what's led to some of the biggest problems that Gens Y & Z are now inheriting.
I really like reading this blog. I read an article about this book in Newsweek today and it really upset me. I am a Gen-Yer and I decided I would do what we do best: write a blog about it. Anyways, I wrote a blog about it as well. Perhaps you could read it and give me some feedback?
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