The title of a 2008 book caused a splash, given the fact that it appeared to be insulting everyone who had been born after 1998. Called The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupifies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) the book by Emory University English professor (and National Endowment for the Arts researcher) Mark Bauerlein turns out to be not quite so provocative as it first appears. Now two-thirds of the way through, I have found the book to be not a rant but rather a carefully-argued thesis.
Bauerlein does blame the uprising generation (as the back cover puts it) of failing to take advantage of "founts of knowledge" provided by the digital age--and instead camping "in the desert, exchanging stories, pictures, tunes, and texts, savoring the thrills of peer attention." But he equally blames parents and cultural gatekeepers such as those educational experts and journalists who fall all over themselves to praise the new generation's tech savvy, thinking it's all to the good. Citing study after study, Bauelein shows, incontrovertibly it seems to me, that it is not: that the technical prowess under 30s do possess fails to help them much in the real worlds of academia and the workplace. While notable exceptions, the ones certain jouralists love to chronicle, exisit, the majority of people 18-30 in 2008 had and may still have some fabulously false notions about their capabilities.
The books on this topic, they just keep on coming, and I will continue to alert you to them.
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