The Dumbest Generation
Posted by Dan on Jul 25th, 2008
2008
Jul 25
Mark Bauerlein thinks that young Americans are the dumbest generation ever, and he blames it all on the internet. Specifically, he thinks teenagers are using the internet to communicate with other teenagers, as opposed to learning something.
I suspect that every generation thinks the next generation is a bunch of idiots, and blames it on something recent. The internet, television, rock and roll, comic books… the technology changes but the story remains the same.
July 28th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Knowledge is a power game. Old people and their institutions (colleges and universities) define what knowledge is and then judge the younger generation by their standards (and they have the power to enforce those standards). I have known professors who have flunked students in tradional subjects like French, those very same students who were teaching the professors to use a computer. Who were the dummies?
And by the standards of a hundred years ago, almost everyone, including the vast majority of professors, would be considered uneducated, since the standard of education was the knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin.
Yes, the story does remain the same: people unable to deal with change, and believing that they themselves are the end result of progress. They may hold the power for a while to pass judgement on others, but ultimately they and their opinions will fade away as the younger generation comes into power (and that generation will probably make the same mistake as their elders, judging those younger than themselves to be “idiots”).
July 28th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Wisdom in using knowledge is what we are lacking culturally. Every time we create a method of communication that precludes the transfer of necessary survival skills and tricks at a minimum critical rate for individuals or groups to survive, we also create the side effect so effectively dramatized in several of the original Star Trek episodes, and they were based on a book, I don’t remember the title of.