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The dumbest generation?
My husband pointed me to David Robinson’s Wall Street Journal review of The Dumbest Generation this morning. Though I know it is not wise to comment on a book I haven’t read or even looked at (please don’t forgive me for this!), the review itself provoked so many questions about a generation I teach and recently mothered.
According to Robinson, the book by Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, 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.
And that:
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.
Bauerlein, the author, shares that websites students visit most often, like MySpace and YouTube:
harden adolescent styles and thoughts, amplifying the discourse of the lunchroom and keg party, not spreading the works of the Old Masters.
To be honest, I do see that some social networking reinforces some negative behaviors.
But I wonder if keg parties occurred prior to online social networking.
I also wonder how many students of my generation, or my parents’ greatest generation, voluntarily and regularly read and spread the works of the Old Masters.
I wonder if we really could or should discourage the shallow discourse of the lunchroom–for students or for faculty. I kind of like shallow lunches. Though the focus of my own college major was 16th century British poetry and drama, I prefer not to discuss Marlowe or Spenser’s Faerie Queene during those twenty minutes.
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Here’s what I observe from my own perch:
- We are finding new ways to share our understanding of the works of the Old Masters, as well as their female counterparts, as well as worthy contemporary writers from all over the world. Our literature circles are moving online to blogs and wikis and nings. And the discussion appears even more considered and more vibrant.
- Most of our assignments, even when they heavily make use of technologies, require students to open books and write full sentences. The usual goals: developing knowledge, sharing new knowledge by communicating effectively.
- Students have more access to the criticism of the work of the Old Masters (and the others) through databases that allow simultaneous and remote use where there formerly was none. They use these tools heavily. They use them, as well, to explore the great issues of their own time.
- Students can now be introduced to the work of the Old Masters with multiple points of access, in multiple languages, in multiple new types of media–e-books, audiobooks, as well as new interpretations in streamed audio and video.
- Many of the teens I know read. They read on their own. Our books circulate. Our shelves are a mess. We like it that way.
- At our school, when we expect learners to consult scholarly sources in their research, they do.
- My students are beginning to use the tools available to network and organize for good, for social action beyond the geographic scope of their own immediate social lives.
- My students are engaged in their work in new ways, ways I haven’t seen in thirty years of work with young people.
- My students know that they have real audience for their efforts. That knowledge often results in powerful, creative work.
A few other things.
What Brokaw called the greatest generation, may not have been, and from my own family experience, was not the most literate generation. Many were too busy putting food on the table and worrying about the mortgage to give much time to intellectual pursuits.
That does not diminish what they accomplished with pure grit, determination, perseverance, and sacrifice. The greatest generation was faced with challenges and calamities of unimaginable proportion. And they, as Americans, rose to the occasion. They made so much possible for those of us who followed.
What Bauerlein calls the dumbest generation has greater educational opportunities, certainly at the post-secondary level. And while I cannot deny the triviality and self-centeredness of some of their uses of technology, this generation has not been presented with the awesome challenges that our parents and grandparents had to face.
What will their challenges look like? How will they respond? Will they be able to put aside the purely personal, the solipsistic, and use their developing knowledge and their new tools to accomplish significant, undumb things on both local and global fronts?
The answer to the hypothesis that Bauerlein poses is currently an open question.
But I have great hope for a generation I prefer not to label.
As parents, teachers, and mentors, we need to take to heart what this author says to ensure that this generation has all the tools it needs–intellectual, technological, traditional–to meet their yet undefined challenges.
In the meantime, Mr. Bauerlein has a point. And that is that we should not permit the bar for academic achievement to be lowered. (We may need to rethink the fact that the number of bars we use is limited to two or three that rise and fall with Number 2 pencils.)
With respect to the Old Masters, I can only observe that Shakespeare and some other greats continue to be read, played, replayed, and remixed in my school in many thoughtful and creative new ways.
I don’t profess to be wise, but it seems to me that every older generation fails to recognize the strengths of the generation that succeeds it.
The students I work with are not dumb.
They are full of potential and I recognize my great responsibility in helping them realize it.
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About Joyce Valenza
Joyce is an Assistant Professor of Teaching at Rutgers University School of Information and Communication, a technology writer, speaker, blogger and learner. Follow her on Twitter: @joycevalenza
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