The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) by Mark Bauerlein
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- ISBN: 1585426393
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Pub. Date: May 2008
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Synopsis
This shocking, surprisingly entertaining romp into the intellectual nether regions of today's underthirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a society of know-nothings.
Publishers Weekly
From the title forward, Emory University English professor Bauerlein's curmudgeonly screed lets the generalizations run wild. Dismissing the under-30 crowd as "drowning in their own ignorance and aliteracy," Bauerlein repeatedly laments how "teens and 20-year olds love their blogs and games, and they carry the iPod around like a security blanket." Rather than descend into a "maelstrom of youth amusements" (i.e., "rapping comments into a blog"), Bauerlein would have youngsters delve into the great books. (Nip ignorance in the bud, he reasons, because once adulthood sets in, "It's too late to read Dante and Milton.") Bauerlein's considerable research is obvious, but has he ever read a well-edited blog or interviewed an intellectually curious and tech-savvy student? Instead, he writes in a black-and-white myopia that comes close to self-parody; indeed, if it's true that "Twixters 22-to-30-year-olds don't read, tour museums, travel, follow politics, or listen to any music but pop and rap, much less...lay out a personal reading list," one can't help but wonder why Bauerlein, as an educator, doesn't take some responsibility.
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Biography
Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and has worked as a director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he oversaw studies about culture and American life, including the much discussed Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Weekly Standard, Reason magazine, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among many other publications and scholarly periodicals. A frequent lecturer, he has been called one of the Independent Women's Forum's "favorite intellectuals," and has been praised by columnist George Will as "dazzling."
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Good summary, but scary picture, of America's futureby badgerpackdgd
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11/21/2009: I would agree with some of the other reviewers that the author's lament has probably, and probably always will be, applied to the younger generations. I would also say that it might be a little too "academic" for some readers. All that said, it is worth reading, especially if you're mid-career like me, to try to understand some of the new and future coworkers. The first chapter alone, when he discussed the "Jaywalking" segments is enough to make anyone cringe. Given that the younger generation has all the technology available that they do, you do have to wonder why they seem to know so little about the world around them.
Not necessarily the dumbest, but certainly one that doesn't seem to readby Virginian_by_Birth
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07/26/2009: The hyperbole of the title it eyecatching; however, I take issue with the generation's being labeled the dumbest. The major thesis, it seems to me, is that the current generation of young people (my own children's age) is too much wired into instantaneous communication and only considers the immediate to be relevant.
I would submit that while the first part of the thesis is correct, the latter part is one probably applied by every generation to the one following it.The book is something of an eye-opener for most people, I would think; however, as a retired teacher, I have seen this coming all along. I would submit that everyone would gain some benefir from reading it, but of course, the people that would gain the most benefit are the ones that the author is writing about.
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