This link has been bookmarked by 4 people . It was first bookmarked on 14 May 2008, by Wisely.
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16 May 08
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15 May 08
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14 May 08
Wisely"To Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, the present is a good time to be young only if you don't mind a tendency toward empty-headedness. In "The Dumbest Generation," he argues that cultural and technological forces, far from opening up an exciting new world of learning and thinking, have conspired to create a level of public ignorance so high as to threaten our democracy."
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Adults are so busy imagining the ways that technology can improve classroom learning or improve the public debate that they've blinded themselves to the collective dumbing down that is actually taking place. The kids are using their technological advantage to immerse themselves in a trivial, solipsistic, distracting online world at the expense of more enriching activities – like opening a book or writing complete sentences.
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Mr. Bauerlein presents a wealth of data to show that young people, with the aid of digital media, are intensely focusing on themselves, their peers and the present moment.
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"The verbal values of adulthood and adolescence clash, and to enter adult conditions, individuals must leave the verbal mores of high school behind. The screen blocks the ascent."
What frustrates Mr. Bauerlein is not these deficits themselves – it's the way a blind celebration of youth, and an ill-informed optimism about technology, have led the public to ignore them.
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Mr. Bauerlein contrasts such "evidence-lite enthusiasm" for digital technologies with a weightier learning tradition. He eulogizes New York's City College in the mid-20th century, a book-centered, debate-fostering place where a generation of intellectuals rejected the "sovereignty of youth" in favor of the concerted study of canonical texts and big ideas.
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