The Dumbest Generation: Read This Book, If You Can

Mark Baerlein's The Dumbest Generation: How The Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future is one of the most rewarding reads I've had in some time.  Every educator and parent should read this book.  Many thanks to Joe Knippenberg who recommended the book a couple weeks ago at NLT.  Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, successfully marshals evidence of the academic failures of our young and relates those failures to a phobia for books and love of "screen time" (computer, television or otherwise).  Bauerlein illustrates the consistent failure of technology to fulfill its promise in education by explaining how the very nature of the computer experience is conducive to providing information but not knowledge.  He concludes with a discussion of the betrayal of the young by older mentors who should be helping usher the young into adulthood by challenging their prejudices (as opposed to massaging them) and helping the young encounter the great tradition of ideas.

Bauerlein is aware of the challenge that he is simply an old fuddyduddy who hates what is new.  He eloquently rebuffs this notion by showing the facts of academic malfeasance and by making one of the most succinct and convincing arguments I have encountered for teaching great books. Bauerlein also discussed research that suggests that the very nature of "screen time" mitigates against any acquisition of knowledge.  For example, when using the internet for school research, students tend to "cut and paste" from web sites without ever really reading or thinking about the information they are presenting.  Bauerlein gives opposing views their due and proceeds to rebut them in a methodical manner with logic and solid evidence. 

One thing I learned from Bauerlein's book is that if I make this blog post too long no one will read it, so let me just sum up the argument.  Bauerlein begins by producing prodigious amounts of data of the various gaps in the knowledge of our young.  One can quibble here and there with the use of statistics, namely whether they have comparative value.  Compared to 50 years ago we educate a higher percentage of the population both in K-12 and certainly in college.  Therefore when you talk about students of the past you are talking about a different population make-up than we have today.  But the author also shows that in the last 25 years or so, when populations are fairly comparable, the drop off in performance is remarkable. 

Bauerlein is not just interested showing, once again, how little our students know.  His other point is that some make extravagant claims as to the promise of technology, but young peoples' experience of technology does not match.  Technology is not used by them to gain knowledge but to amuse themselves.  This use of technology reinforces a youth culture that is self-obsessed and unconcerned with the outside world.  While technology may have the promise of revealing a whole world of ideas, the young use it to chat, play games, and goof around.  This leaves students unable and unwilling to sit in quiet, read a book, concentrate on it, and think about it.  While the young today have unprecedented access to information, they do not have the skills to analyze the information intelligently, to put it into any context, and turn that information into knowledge.  This leaves young people ignorant creatures of prejudice, and, worse yet, solipsistic adolescent prejudice that they are never challenged to overcome.

Bauerlein writes:

[Screen time] conditions minds against quiet, concerted study, against imagination unassisted by visuals, against linear, sequential analysis of texts, against an idle afternoon with a detective story and nothing else. 

One of the book's strongest sections is where Bauerlein discusses the way in which language is acquired and used.  We tend to talk with a lesser vocabulary than we write, so those who don't read will develop a smaller vocabulary than those who do, and Bauerlein goes to some lengths to show the paucity of reading by our students.  Bauerlein makes the powerful point that most learning actually takes place out of school. So it isn't just what goes on in the schools, but the habits of leisure time that build the mind and prepare it for adulthood and citizenship. Bauerlein convicingly shows how the inability to read dampens one's ability to formulate one's own ideas and analyze the ideas of others.  And it must be stressed that Bauerlein shows that it is not just that we use computers badly, but the very nature of how people encounter computer screens (to say noting of the passivity of television) makes sound learning difficult. 

This post is already long enough that most will not make it this far.  So let me terminate with Bauerline's own conclusion.  Throughout the book Bauerlein shows that the young are not just ignorant; they are disengaged from the civitas.  As Jefferson would have predicted, a semi-literate, unaware population is not capable of self-government.  Unable (and unwilling) to assess complex arguments, incapable of analyzing phenomena in the light of history, the young are poor citizens who, like subjects, must defer to authority to tell them what to do and think.  They lack the capacity to question that authority. In short, they are unable to perform the tasks of the vigilant citizen Jefferson thought necessary to make free government possible.  Not only do the young have impoverished souls, they are poor citizens.  This does not bode well for the Republic. 

Oh, and Bauerlein provides copious evidence that "mobile computing" education is a complete waste of money.

Update: Joe gives us a link.