This past year has seen a remarkable realease from Mark Bauerlein- "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)." Bauerlein is a professor of sociology at Emory University so it caught me off guard to read such blatant and obscene labeling. Then I got into the meat of his argument. And laughed. It wasn't that he was acedemically inept (I promise I won't go off on sociology professors in this space) or that he was disconnected from reality. It was that every one of his primary arguments were actually laughable. Here's a couple of his gems with some added commentary they sparked...
- They are likely to get run over in the street
I'm sure this has more to do with the fact that no teenager in contemporary society actually WALKS, let alone crosses the street (Maybe he studied students trying to get to Rico's on hour lunch)
- They don't read books and don't want to
Has he not heard of Harry Potter?!?
- They get ridiculed for original thought and good writing
Last time I checked the blcym facebook group, the students were having open discussions and using their creativity to express themselves
- They don't store the information
Why do they have to remember all of the incredible minutiae their teachers now assign them. Don't let me get started on what they have to learn at what age- I'm convinced in 10 years it'll be standard junior high curriculum to discuss quantum physics
Here's the best one:
That's what passes for a concluding argument after massive academic study. Apparently.
I don't know if he inteded to finish with the "give them time" or simply to refer to a vast population as "whippersnappers" but this highlights a difficulty of today's culture (religious, economic, political, sociological): We point to other groups and people for fault while pointing back to ourselves for the "answer." Chirst has called us to pick up our crosses, not shove them onto someone else. May we each day find someone to applaud, to hold up, and from whom to ask their forgiveness, because without that, we'll be so self-obsessed, we're likely to get run over in the street.
