I believe the statement that we are “the dumbest generation” is completely bogus considering all that this generation has accomplished. We are the technology era, before our generation we didn’t have the great technology that we take for granted everyday such as computers and the internet. Before we had these we would have to go through hundreds of pages in text books looking for answers to questions you may have. But now all we need to do is type the question in Google or another search engine and there the answer pops up in a second. Mark Bauerlein’s main point is “today's digital generation is becoming insulated in its own stultifying cocoon of bad spelling, civic illiteracy and endless postings that hopelessly confuse triviality with transcendence”. This necessary does not make us dumb it just means that we have been using your technology to help us. People rely on spell checker when typing a paper that they don’t care if they spell something wrong because spell checker will automatically correct if for them.
If Bauerlein knows for a fact that we are the dumbest generation can he please explain why IQ scores have been rising every year since the 1930’s? IQ measures your all around intelligence, and from this statistic we are actually the smartest generation. Bauerlein claims that our generation does not know as much history and politics as earlier generations. But the earlier generations had a much narrower education of mostly just math, History, science and writing. However today we have a much broader educational list including all the new technology and businesses courses. So instead of being focused on only a couple subjects today we know a broader range of information. I have no idea where Bauerlein has any room to talk about us being the dumbest generation, all I can think of is that everyone looks down to younger people claimer that they aren’t as mature and don’t know as much as their elders.
I think that older generations had less information to take in because of the lack of technology. We know more about our world than ever right now and that means we have more to process. We may know a bit less about ancient history but we have a broader understanding on more subjects.
ReplyDeleteGreat point about our IQ scores. The IQ test is considered as the best test for intellectual ability, and I think he knows this and left it out on purpose because it kills his argument and no one will buy his ridiculous book if his opinion is already proven false.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we are not the dumbs generation ever. We are just using are tool and technology better than the generation before us and that means that we don’t have to spend as much of our time working on one project. That way we can actually accomplish more in our life’s our parents and grandparents, etc. We are working smarter not harder and that does not make us dumb but actually very intelligent.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that there is alot more available studies and it is a much more broad spandex of what we can learn. You make good points to that we are the technology era!
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