The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) | 
| Author: Mark Bauerlein
Publisher: Tarcher
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.39
You Save: $10.56 (42%)
New (30) Used (8) from $13.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 4104
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 1585426393
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.231
EAN: 9781585426393
ASIN: 1585426393
Publication Date: May 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW, IN-HOUSE READY TO SHIP!!! NOT A BARGAIN, REMAINDER OR BOOKCLUB BOOK!!! WE ARE A 5 STAR SELLER.
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
This shocking, lively exposure of the intellectual vacuity of todays under thirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a nation of know-nothings.
Can a nation continue to enjoy political and economic predominance if its citizens refuse to grow up?
For decades, concern has been brewing about the dumbed-down popular culture available to young people and the impact it has on their futures. At the dawn of the digital age, many believed they saw a hopeful answer: The Internet, e-mail, blogs, and interactive and hyper-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children. The terms information superhighway and knowledge economy entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their knowledge and understanding of technology to set themselves apart as the vanguards of this new digital era.
That was the promise. But the enlightenment didnt happen. The technology that was supposed to make young adults more astute, diversify their tastes, and improve their verbal skills has had the opposite effect. According to recent reports, most young people in the United States do not read literature, visit museums, or vote. They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount basic American history, name their local political representatives, or locate Iraq or Israel on a map. The Dumbest Generation is a startling examination of the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its consequences for American culture and democracy.
Drawing upon exhaustive research, personal anecdotes, and historical and social analysis, Mark Bauerline presents an uncompromisingly realistic portrait of the young American mind at this critical juncture, and lays out a compelling vision of how we might address its deficiencies.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...
 Some good facts in need of better analysis August 22, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
In the hands of teens, the computer is clearly not the learning tool phenomena that had adults so enthralled. Just because information is at their fingertips doesn't mean they are using it. For teens the computer is a cross between television and a telephone used mainly to select teen appeal content and chatter endlessly with friends. Surprise surprise, the computer age just made it that much easier for them to insulate themselves from the adult world. But are these skills transferable or worthwhile?
Mark Bauerlein goes to great pains to list and explain the validity of his research and data to prove that despite so many writers raving about the digital generation being smarter in more innovative, search savvy ways than before, comments from college professors, employee recruiters and national stats indicate that young people are sorely lacking in basic intellectual skills.
Bauerlein seeks out hard evidence provided by a website marketing firm tracking eye movement, of subjects wired to computers, and recording their comments as they interacted with websites. Their findings? People don't read at the screen, they skim and look for what turns them on. They want websites to look the same so they can interact with a familiar interface and they resist long blocks of text. Computers are actually helping people to dumb down and not excercise intellectual skills at all. We suspected as much which is possibly why this book has an audience.
The rest of the book is not about the digital age, but about youth culture since it became the phenomena extraordinaire of the 60's and turned this nation into the youth worshipping culture that it is. Those who should be mentoring students by raising the bar, he contends, have bought into the youth phenomena and now promote adolescent insularity, unhampered by the burden of tradition especially in liberal arts. This was actually quite a helpful perspective because it helped me realize that American Youth Culture is an aberration of history further fueled by consumerism which benefits from an impulsive materialistic adolescent mindset. Bauerlein, however, does not provide such insight.
Rather he covers all the usual arguments about why a democracy needs knowledgeable civic minded citizens and that just isn't happening anymore. None of these arguments are convincing largely because he blames the participants and doesn't mention the mind-binding sameness of a materialistic world egged on by corporate controlled capitalism. His description of young people today describes my own anti-civic, anti-intellectual, self-involved youth 25 years ago thus reviewers have panned him for so broadly criticizing any generation still in these formative years and this is perhaps the biggest flaw of his book.
This English professor author is simply arguing for the old culture of intellectual rigor as it was prescribed in his day when books were king and intellectuals had longer arguments. And I agree a book has a lot more scope to grasp the big picture. Ironically he has failed to grasp one that doesn't sound worn and tired out which is too bad because the digital age clearly needs perspective just as the Internet needs more depth.
He does mention, as a good sign, that young people are a lot better behaved than their sexually wild, drug using predecessors were. This only makes me wonder if the digital age is creating a more conservative, easily controlled populace, but Bauerlein offers no correlations here.
Except for one mention of teens missing out on a soldering iron, he does not mention the core of this whole argument which is that teens are not getting outdoors or experiencing hands-on skills that would allow them greater self-sufficiency. They don't negotiate or manage for themselves their own free time because now it's all so much protective play dating thus they lack initiative in the workplace and managing skills for facilitating team work. Outdoor activity and skills of self-sufficiency were eroding in their parents' time in favor of grooming worker bees for the digi-mines which might well be the logical progression of the book reading intellectual activity he espouses.
Amanda Kovattana is author of Diamonds In My Pocket: Tales of a Childhood In Asia
 Children reflect on their parents August 20, 2008
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
And if the children can't make it, the elder generation has to be responsible. This sort of smug bashing is not helping anyone.
Degenerate Luddite August 20, 2008
6 out of 19 found this review helpful
First off, I have not read the book. I will not read the book. I will discourage everyone to not read the book. All it is a collection of fearmongering "good ole' days" propaganda from a Luddite who can't keep up with the shifting culture of information consumption and new ways to learn both new and old lessons. Like the majority of people who find change scary, he demonizes that which he willingly makes no effort to understand, and uses platitudinous anecdotes with no real bearing on reality and manipulated statistics to make far-reaching claims about how dumb my generation (yes, my) generation is, and makes the logical face plant jump about trustworthiness.
I find even the title and the implication that my digital "lifestyle" as it were has done anything other than enhance me as an informed, educated, individual. There are plenty of better written, more balanced arguments exploring both the pros and the cons of the current state of information culture. Do yourself a favor and do your own research, and find your own conclusions that aren't based on fear and anxiety.
A fairly dumb book August 17, 2008
4 out of 11 found this review helpful
I have been reading this book, and am so far impressed by two apparent facts.
First, the title is a lie. All the author proves is that the kids are as dumb as us. How exciting.
And then, second, will this book do any good? I doubt it. As Ortega y Gasset noted, almost a century ago: "The commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will."
But of course -- everybody is equal!!! (And if they aren't, they can always find somebody else to blame......)
 Here's Generation D's Failing Report Card August 15, 2008
4 out of 9 found this review helpful
[Fred Allen, radio/TV comedian of the 50s, once "predicted" that the then mass of new TV-watchers would eventually have "brains the size of peas and eyeballs the size of cantelopes" if they didn't get the excesses of the"vast wasteland" (words of then FCC Chairman, Newton Minnow) -watching under control. Well...] Seems we just may have reached the point Allen had in mind, our having fostered a generation who's life is routinely about being glued to all kinds of electronic screens...not to mention getting musically iWired, making big money, looking good and having fun
Nevermind brain-power enhancement. For youngsters, gaining knowledge, writing, shaping values, and just plain reading are not the "cool" things to do these days.
--Or so author and university English professor Mark Bauerlein claims. Risking minor wrath of 12-to-29-year-olds by describing their lifestyles as mind-dulling and narrow, he describes a youthful way of life that's devoid of the curiosities of even everyday learning. --But lest the reader be fooled that this is a book repleat with armchair opinion, here's one bold, serious effort that takes on a generation in need of a mind-set overhaul, a generation unashamed of its open apathy toward reading and learning --and what it means for all of us. The book makes its point relying on a myriad of convincing references, results, and conclusions from studies, surveys by reputable academic think tanks, associations, ed boards, conferences and committees.
In fact, sometimes the read gets a little dry with all the numbers, percentages, comparisons, charts, quotes and definitions offered. Indeed, The Dumbest Generation [the book, that is] is not a loose work designed to lampoon a vulnerable, younger people. Quite the opposite, it's an up-close examination of the relationship between lack of learning and disdain for reading...and a resulting dismal future for our democracy. At first, this sounds like a stretch, but Bauerlein is a credible voice and does a good job showing we've got a problem on our hands: a generation of very capable youth...that openly rejects the past, rejects authority and mentors, rejects schoolwork...only to fill the void with over-abundant screen-watching, never-ending peer contact, time-consuming jobs, and dreaming about/planning for hefty future incomes.
We find out our "kids" know little about math, tradition, history, philpsophy, art, current events, science, the world around them...and, says Bauerline, we're going to pay for it. He claims the low levels of general knowledge comes from too much time spent in self-serving, ego- boosting activities...like texting & iPoding & watching TV, web surfing, playing video games, and more. The author claims "Generation D," shall we say, reads little, spells poorly and writes even worse....and doesn't much care about the difficiencies.
He takes no cheap shots. Bauerlein drills into nobody and affixes little blame but does make a sound case, outlining how too much Internet and too little reading have lead to poor general knowledge, which ultimately results in the demise of a democracy. [Appropriately, he includes a good reference to Jefferson and his comments about "a literate electorate...."]Our author puts his research of "how it is" out for all of us to think about...as he concludes that declining values, a reduced quality of life and crumbling political process are in store.
Unfortunately, the book falls short in making no clear connection between youth's passion for electronic gear and fun-time...and the the multinational corporations' infatuation with youth's cash. That marketeers expect billion$ and billion$ from this group annually is no small point, and "getting smarter" almost Requires the rejection of (at least some of) the hip, modern, "cool" electronic toys the 12-to-29ers infectiously require. ["I couldn't live without my cell phone," laments one of The Generation's respondents in the book.] We get only passing notes on the enormous pressures put on them to buy. Bauerline might
have shown some cause and effect. Why not here and now address the relationship between pandering companies and low achievement? As there's, apparently, no money in getting smarter these days, Bauerline passes up a perfectly good opportunity to briefly clarify...even though up front he tells us that the scope of this book is limited and would not include
such examinations.
So, the Internet's the culprit in all this window-watching the young generation's "into"? --Hard to disagree, especially when we see so much of youth culture forever plugged-in, on-line, and checked-out. An important, laudable work...yet the author is apt to make some mad --like middle school and university teachers who, he claims, have lost the responsibility for teaching kids to learn How To Learn --like some members of "Generation D" who (unfortunately) may criticize this laudable work as an personal affront instead of a blueprint for change. [--But, then again, they'd had to have Read The Book first....] Given that the intellibots of the "dumbest generation" are, in fact, great at mastering Web offerings, Blackberry and cell phone manipulation, and 40-level video-game challenges, 50s funnyman Fred Allen probably should have included: "...and thumbs the girth of tree stumps."
|
|
|
