Don't trust anyone under 30, they say!

[nascent]

So I just finished reading an article on Mark Bauerlein's needlessly long-titled book "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)", and quite honestly I'm more than a little bit offended. If you'd like to read the article for yourself, click here, but for those who don't here's a few vital quotes:

"We're about to turn our country over to a generation that doesn't read much and doesn't think much either,"

"Digital habits are continuous with longstanding tendencies to tune out adults, but on a graph, the line is curving up very quickly."

"One saving grace in this dismal picture of screen-obsessed kids is that social networking does involve reading and writing, so it ought to have an educational value, right? Not right, according to Bauerlein. Text messaging does not involve writing coherent, elegant paragraphs that involve sustained arguments and presentations of evidence. It's just another way where kids teach each other bad habits."

Now it's no news that older people love to bemoan the digital generation for various reasons, but what gets my ire here most is that they're trying to paint time spent online as a willing self-stupification that has no value whatsoever. It pains me to hear people over-generalize online activity like that. I'll be among the first to admit that the Internet attracts - and sustains - its share of stupid people, but this kind of blatant age discrimination is just uncalled for! I'm 23, and I wouldn't be half the writer or thinker that I am today if it wasn't for message boards, and in particular roleplaying boards like this one.

My personal thoughts on the matter are two-fold.

One: older generations haven't caught up to the idea that we now live in an access-based society. What sense does it make to have students memorize, for instance, a long list of names, dates, and places for the American civil war when we know scientifically that only about 10% of that will be remembered long-term? The info is available online, so shouldn't schools focus more on teaching kids how to use knowledge rather than foolishly try to force them to retain it?

Two: for the last thirty years or more, schools have focused on making students know when they should have been teaching them how to think! If we 'under 30s', quote, "don't think much", the blame might just lay with a generation or two that were more concerned with standardized tests and "keeping pace with China" than actually taking the time to model what it means to be a thinking, reasoning, balanced person!

Anyways, I've ranted enough. What are your thoughts about age discrimination and the digital divide? Feel free to discuss any related ideas here as well.

[Shinn]

I have to agree on your thoughts about how the newer generation should be taught to match how society is nowadays. The schools need to figure out how to solve this problem instead of just making the learning curve lower so that you make newer generations will be even dumber that the last. But I don't feel as much offended as you seem to be, frankly from what I see everyday I can understand why they would think young people aren't as bright as they would hope. Even I shake my head in shame sometimes when I see our potential to do so much with what we have and instead use it for idiotic things.

[kempff]

Ahhh...the cycle continues. Humanity just don't change nothing much. Why evarbodie tink so wourd? ;D I'm betting his book is structured like a polemic. Most of the time they're not very good or well written.

People that whine like this make me laugh. Especially old people, sometimes double (if not more) the lifespans of those they're talking and whining about. Damn if I didn't know better that's making the accuser seem a bit ornery, no? The old always ALWAYS protest the youth (let's just say 30 and under is the youth in this situation). They're not good enough, they're GOING TO DESTROY TEH WURLD, or my gods they don't think like we did!!! D= Wonderfully no one seems to realize this has always been, and your situation nigh visible impending doom, is no different.

Now reading the article, it's good the individual in question realizes he might be just another cantankerous old fart. Great, then use a different approach than whining in a book about how the youth are degenerate and stupid. Empiricism would be a good place to start, since debate and theorizing alone fell out of style and acceptance long, long ago. BUT, oh no, he whines about historical knowledge and cites the television, phones, and other devices of the twentieth century as leading up to the Space/Time destroyer of the Internet. This is assuming the same thing didn't the happen back then, this is assuming there wasn't some high standard back then that was seen as being lowered by the old for the young. Who did this lowering, allowed it to occur, act like good little sheep for the government that presides, let corporations maintain growing profits in the name of technological growth? The point is the same, but the complaints in this form are just as pathetic as Bauerlein's.

How did people feel when writing came around? Memorization by yourself was an essential skill, something which writing made obsolete. How did people feel when printing came around? Individual calligraphy was no longer a favorable cost effective measure, printing with blocks and eventually sheets, was easier and preferred. Progress (perhaps better called new technology) comes at the cost of old values and traditions. It seems that in this age a virtual world rather than the real world will have emphasis placed on it. Get used to it says I.

(I love as well Bauerlein's announcement of giving the world over to an age which doesn't read or think, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Most positions of great power and influence are life positions. How many CEO's are under 30? How many billionaires? Obviously people with which would control the world as our man indicates, are not the case, thus the extreme he wants. Shame on him. It'd be great to look at the inverse of this, why should we listen or trust people over 30? Aren't they the ones that got the world into the current Financial Crisis? Perhaps our dear Bauerlein will waffle and say he's really bashing old people and how they did nothing to stop the cycle of "dumbing" down the youth. Always fun to watch that.)

Anyway, I agree with his thought, the youth is for the most part, very stupid. His attempts at going about it and statements show signs of lack of knowledge of the subject he's writing about though.

Really why can't people stop complaining and find a more constructive approach to these kinds of things?

[upsilon]

Mmhmm. I mean really now, if they took the time it took to write all these scathing articles about us because they didn't know how to work the technology themselves and learned how to use it, maybe they would've applied their brain cells to good use. It almost sounds like they fear what they don't understand. C'est la vie.

[kempff]

This topic is a bit like Rap. Mind you old Rap, not current Rap. D=

It almost sounds like they fear what they don't understand. C'est la vie.

Good comment there Upsilon. ;D

[upsilon]

Thanks Kempff xD

And old Rap? Old Rap was old school. Like Saran Wrap.

But again, here we have the rules of the internet coming into play and the subject getting farther and farther away from the original topic with each and every post. xD