An Analysis Of The Dumbest Generation English Language Essay

The Dumbest Generation, How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future ( Or, Do n’t Trust Anyone Under 30 ) is a critical analysis on the effects of the fecund spread of information and communicating engineering on the young person of today. In it, Mark Bauerlein argues that while this engineering could hold been used to increase entree to knowledge and hence better the heads of kids, it has merely been used to deflect them from utile cognition and accomplishments which he strongly implies, although seldom explicitly provinces, merely presently come from books and exposure to art. The book at its nucleus is a research paper, utilizing 100s of facts and an eight page bibliography to back up his thesis, and free from holding to support his beliefs on a philosophical degree, Bauerlein spends much of his paper explicating his many cited statistics and showing his decision about what would go on if the tendency was allowed to go on. Besides the obvious and repeatedly stated decision that an unbridled spread of engineering would do a wholly nescient coevals, Bauerlein concludes his paper with an account of how an informed society is necessary to continue a democratic authorities. Hidden more subtly throughout the book is the concealed message that engineering ‘s isolation of its users from the outside universe and contact with the sorts of people we might non bask being around causes the psychological maturing procedure to decelerate, rendering a coevals raised in the digital epoch ageless kids. Although his book is intended to be read by a broad scope of audiences, Bauerlein ‘s mark audience is the grownups of today, or more specifically, the pedagogues of today. His solution, placed in the concluding chapter of the book, where he was no uncertainty aware that merely those with a personal interest or a love of cognition would make before seting it down, is to promote kids to read and larn for their ain sophistication. He mentions several counter statements to his, but does n’t rebut their logic every bit much as drown them in empirical informations demoing that they have small to nil endorsing them up. Through this book Mark Bauerlein jumped into a national argument already brought up by another similar book, The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby.

But who is Mark Bauerlein? His most obvious characteristic is being a professor of English at Emory University, as stated in his web page at Emory University ‘s official web site and on the screen of his book. Besides harmonizing to the same beginnings, he took a interruption for a twosome of old ages to be a Director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts, demoing that he does hold experience in both assemblage and construing the information with which he liberally fills his book. His ain personal web site reveals that he is a reasonably fecund author himself, from such subjects as racism and literary unfavorable judgment itself, but for the most portion Bauerlein writes about the humanistic disciplines. While this information would evidently take to Bauerlein holding a personal interest in the province of American literacy, it does non truly offer any grounds of prejudice either manner for whether or non there really is a literacy lack. Bauerlein uses his certificates good, trusting merely on his ain credibleness to decently measure informations and to generalize the consequences, leting the existent hazard of misinformation to lie with his beginnings. For the most portion, his information consists of studies of engagement in certain activities and trials of academic accomplishment, chiefly the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is a plan run by a subdivision of the U.S. Department of Education ( Bauerlein 14-5 ) . Where Bauerlein seems to waver in his credibleness is in seeking to avoid sounding reactionist or out of touch, discoursing the information revolution as a signifier of “ Youth Rebellion ” ( Bauerlein 178 ) , doing sweeping remarks such as “ Young people have excessively much pick ” ( Bauerlein 156 ) , and demoing contempt for the design of web sites conforming to the caprices of their readers, whose composings include big bold headlines intended to catch audiences and seting the wide, utile information foremost to maintain the reader paying attending, while wholly disregarding the being of these tactics in newspapers and within his ain book. However, one can understand why the superciliousness was included. A moderate book does n’t sell, and an English Professor knows this better than anyone. But despite some issues sing his relationship to the topic, the book does successfully expose the defects of the so called dumbest coevals, and it surely accomplishes its retroactively stated end, “ to open up the issue to some sober incredulity, to blunt the techno-zeal spreading through schoolrooms and libraries ” ( Bauerlein seven ) , found in the foreword of the paper-back book edition.

We Will Write a Custom Essay Specifically
For You For Only $13.90/page!


order now

The intent of the book is apparent, and stated in its rubric, sub rubric, and sub-sub rubric. Bauerlein uses statistics and logic to demo that the current coevals of kids will be incapable grownups in order to convert parents and pedagogues to promote the kids to read books, learn history, experience broad humanistic disciplines.

Like any good research paper, Bauerlein begins his geographic expedition of the effects of engineering with a traveling debut. In it, he sympathizes with the battles confronting the ambitious young person, who have to indefatigably contend to be the best out of 1000000s merely to come on to the following measure in their lives. However, near the terminal he all of a sudden shifts to his ain images about the mean American pupil, which are rather inexorable. The debut ‘s deficiency of relevancy to the chief topic was most probably added to draw in person who would of course expected the antonym of what is depicted in the first portion of the presentation based on the rubric. Besides, by professing the attempts and adversities of the immature faculty members, he does non estrange them, in a manner dividing those possible readers from the sweeping accusals made subsequently in the book. The pleasantries aside, Bauerlein dives into the disturbance with his mountains of informations, mentioning over one hundred statistics in the first chapter. He uses several sorts of statistics ; some to demo that kids do non go through capable stuff test, some to demo that a big sum of kids do non cognize a specific fact that one is usually expected to cognize, and some to demo that other factors one might see for causes of a lower mean intelligence such as school clip ( Bauerlein 30 ) , finance ( Bauerlein 31 ) , and leisure clip ( Bauerlein 32 ) have merely become less restrictive over clip.

After holding exhaustively proven that today ‘s pupils do n’t cognize what they should, he moves on into the following chapter to discourse why this is. Bauerlein merely says that kids do n’t take to larn plenty. His arm of pick now is the study of pupils in which he shows that kids do non read literature or take part in the humanistic disciplines. The chief study he brings up is a study from National Endowment for the Arts, Reading at Risk, in which Bauerlein show that the reading of any sort of literature is worsening, and particularly so in kids. However, “ the study asked about voluntary reading, non reading required for work or school ” ( Bauerlein 45 ) and despite averments that to be considered a reader one simply had to read “ any work of any quality of any medium-book, newspaper, magazine, web log, Web page, or music Cadmium insert ” ( Bauerlein 47 ) , it is improbable that most of the people who said that they did non read were cognizant of or understood this making, and in all likeliness disregarded any reading they did make as sufficient. Bauerlein goes on to give several illustrations of the positive effects of a ardor for reading such as Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman, which serve more to emotionally touch the reader instead than to logically turn out his point, as the last subdivision did.

Back to the facts, Bauerlein sends out tonss of Numberss bespeaking that the young person of today spend a disproportionate sum of clip on screen engineering. However, alternatively of simply analysing the information, he takes the clip to convey up counterarguments. He shows how other writers such as Steven Berlin Johnson have explored the particular societal and believing forms that could merely happen in a universe of instant communicating and synergistic digital universes in such books as Everything Bad is Good for You, and does n’t really protest their logical thinking, and even gives us his ain visions of an ideal universe where the engineering created a vivacious monolithic community seeking cognition and obtaining true enlightenment.

And so Bauerlein caps it off with an reply to the rhetorical inquiry “ Why, so, should booklovers and diehards carp so much? ” with the short axiom, “ Because that glorious creative activity of young person intelligence has n’t materialized ” ( Bauerlein 107 ) . He shifts one time once more to his statistics, now non merely demoing hapless scholastic public presentation but hapless occupation public presentation every bit good, painting a new image of a coevals of ageless kids who know small and cognize nil practical. Not merely do the digital medias have less complex vocabulary ( Bauerlein 128-9 ) , but they foster “ peer soaking up ” ( Bauerlein 133 ) and hapless attending spans ( Bauerlein 148 ) . He describes the newest batch of immature grownups as “ twixters ” ( Bauerlein 160 ) who despite fiscal stableness, engineering, and readily available instruction, do non settle down and roll through life reasonably aimlessly. The solution, harmonizing to Bauerlein, is for the pedagogues of America to lift up and advance reading and humanistic disciplines alternatively of engineering entirely, which has been shown to be uneffective by itself to advance acquisition and cognition.

In the concluding chapter, Bauerlein compares an nescient grownups that the nescient kids would go to Rip Van Winkle ( Bauerlein 204-9 ) , cognizing nil that they need to in a universe that all of a sudden demands their attending and engagement, and unaware of how to experience about the issues environing them. Bauerlein closes with a decision that if uncorrected, the tendency of an stupid young person would sabotage democratic society, and that merely by reintegrating tradition into larning could we salvage society from the “ sovereignty of young person. ” ( Bauerlein 223 ) brought approximately by a freedom from stuff that challenges what they think.

The overall construction of the book is designed for a wide scope of readers. An interesting debut pulls in readers of all kinds, and so a series of facts puts the issue of childhood ignorance newly onto the heads of concerned grownups. Specific cogent evidence of his claim trails this to counter those who doubt the cogency of his claim, followed by recognition and rebuttal of claims to pacify those more enlightened on the topic, and he finishes the book with a powerful, about alarmist message that exploits the frights of a society of imbeciles and their nationalism to swing to his side his co-workers, pupils, and critics.

Of class, Bauerlein is surely non the first to notice on the lifting ignorance among today ‘s immature grownups. Just three months before The Dumbest Generation was published, The Age of American Unreason, a book by Susan Jacoby, hit the shelves with a similar decision, that the digital age has caused the current young person to go self captive and disregard what goes on around them ; Bauerlein mentions it in go throughing. For long old ages it has been suspected that digital engineering would non better instruction. In an essay by Michael Schrage from 1997, competently named “ Computers Will Not Transform Education, ” shows uncertainty about the immature cyberspace ‘s ability to revolutionise instruction, and points out that neither the wireless nor the telecasting had a great impact on pupil public presentation. This sentiment was besides expressed in another essay that twelvemonth, “ Computers Can non Replace Good Teachers, ” by Clifford Stoll, who makes the unagitated averment that “ most acquisition is n’t fun. Learning takes work. Discipline. Responsibility-You have to make your prep. ” Both of the anticipations of a high sum of disbursement on engineering by instruction and an undistinguished alteration in public presentation are apparent in The Dumbest Generation. However, Bauerlein ‘s presentation of hapless public presentation seems to belie the Flynn consequence, the rise of IQ over clip, but alternatively of contending it, he lets it sit, and in some ways appears to disregard the elephant in the room when discoursing the relevance of new ocular acquisition techniques, trusting about wholly on trial public presentation.

However, non all of the information plants in favour of Bauerlein. Harmonizing to The Nation ‘s Report Card, the official web site for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, “ Mathematicss tonss for 9- and 13- year-olds are higher than all old appraisal old ages ” and that “ Reading accomplishments at all three ages improve since 2004. ” Furthermore, harmonizing to the charts on the long-run tendency subdivision of the web site, mean tonss overall have increased bit by bit but invariably since the first trial in 1978. So while Bauerlein may be right that the figure of pupils who pass the trial may be diminishing, this is chiefly due to the degree of competency being raised faster than the kids are acquiring better, a much less awful scenario. In fact, “ On both the reading and the math trials, and at all three tested ages ( 9, 13 and 17 ) , the lowest-ever tonss in the history of the NAEP were recorded by kids born between 1961 and 1965 ” ( Neil Howe ) . However, the natural mark addition has non gotten any faster in thirty old ages, the addition is most likely due to increased incomes, higher instructor to pupil ratios, better wellness, and many of the other betterments that Bauerlein points out instead than engineering, which would hold shown higher betterment in recent old ages, when the information revolution started. Of class, all of this is merely relevant if you put your religion into NAEP trials, which harmonizing to Jim Hull of The Center for Public Education in “ The proficiency argument: A usher to NAEP accomplishment degrees, ” you ca n’t. Hull shows that NAEP criterions for proficiency in a topic are higher than about all of the province regulated proficiency trials, and the tested stuff frequently widely differs from province course of study.

One of Bauerlein ‘s chief beginnings is Reading at Risk, a study explicating the consequences of a 2002 study of reading wonts by the National Endowment for the Arts, which he states indicates decreased reading in all age groups and a big diminution in immature readers. However, the 2008 consequences were released in January 2009, as a kind of subsequence titled Reading on the Rise, which bared the unexpected intelligence that the per centum of literary readers had really gone up, and even more astoundingly, “ Literary reading has increased most quickly among the youngest grownups. ” This is n’t merely contradictory to the tendency of 1992 to 2002, from which Bauerlein draws cogent evidence of a non reading populace ; it wholly turns it upside down. And while the study was published eight months after The Dumbest Generation, the study itself was taking topographic point as Bauerlein was completing his book, and that the marvelous return to literature had begun and reading rates were lifting as Bauerlein was composing about how the reading rates were falling, and he did n’t detect the complete reversal go oning right under his olfactory organ, or take to disregard it.

Most people who picked up The Dumbest Coevals were likely anticipating a batch of expanded logic and assumptive concluding like what makes up the counter statements to this book such as Everything Bad is Good For You, which do non hold much true grounds. I was personally delighted to happen that Mark Bauerlein had taken the clip to happen non merely adequate informations, but a enormous sum of information. For the most portion, his logic is sound ; nevertheless, his chief struck a bad chord. Because engineering has increased while the rational public presentation of the newest coevals has gone down, engineering must be doing the newest coevals to be the dumbest. Post hoc ergo proptor hoc. While he briefly explains why several other possible causes for lower trial tonss have n’t happened, he does n’t of all time happen a factual nexus between engineering and the alteration in scores other than the times in which both occur. Equally far as books and engineering, print reading would of course diminish as web use went up, merely due to the bounds of clip. In fact, Bauerlein does n’t hold any cogent evidence of high literary reading from before twenty old ages ago ; we are merely expected to believe that those before us spent all of their free clip reading. What Bauerlein fails to turn to is the fact that societal networking is non the consequence of engineering on reading, but the consequence of engineering on existent, face-to-face societal interaction. I ‘ll leap to hold with the averment that a lessening in public presentation could be based on the ability to take non to win, but it is society, non engineering, that facilitated this displacement. The kids of today are n’t expected to read literature much, and do n’t derive anything concrete from it, so most of them do n’t and I would anticipate it. Am I supposed to believe that the pupils of yore read The Divine Comedy for merriment? They did n’t, and for the most portion, people read merely what they like to read or what they have to read. And when kids do n’t hold to read much, they largely read what ‘s merriment, each other, and other frivolousnesss like picture games. In The Dumbest Coevals: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future ( Or, Do n’t Trust Anyone Under 30, Mark Bauerlein uses out of context information to convince readers that our promotions have made my coevals the “ dumbest, ” when truly it is merely non expected to make more, and its sentiment is valued every bit of import as the teachers. Indeed, with subject, engineering can be and already is used for unbelievable efforts in larning. Without the photocopier, the online databases paid for by my school, and the cyberspace, I would cognize nil more on this topic than what is in this book. If more was expected of pupils, both pupil cognition and good usage of engineering would lift, to the point where English professors like Mark Bauerlein would halt dividing published content into the classs of print and web. And rather honestly, I ‘m insulted he used the rubric “ The Dumbest Coevals ” when a rubric more adjustment to his thesis would be “ The Laziest Generation. ” An alarmist book, The Dumbest Generation was written to sell a deformed thought that an English professor had a batch of published work already invested in, and was written to sell a batch of books. In both of these he succeeded.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *