Dumbest Generation

We’ve all heard the phrase “The Greatest Generation”, spoken in reference to the kids who came of age during the great depression, fought to victory in World War II, staved off communism for a few decades, and many finished their working lives by placing American astronauts on the moon. I’ll certainly agree that from a historical viewpoint they are indeed The Greatest Generation, and I for one am a bit envious. I’m one of the “Baby Boom” generation (actually I pre-date the baby boom by a few years), that didn’t manage to do anything quite as spectacular as winning WW II, or being the first men on the moon. But we did manage to survive the disruption of the Vietnam years, and the technological era we brought about is second to none. (So are the world wide problems we seem to be getting blamed for.)

Now we have yet another generation coming along, and searching for a definitive title. By this, I’m referring to the current crop of “Under Thirties” among us. Perhaps unfairly, they seem to be earning the title of ‘The Dumbest Generation’ as publicized by Mark Bauerlein in his recent book by that name. “Don’t trust anyone under thirty” he loudly proclaims, rightly or wrongly. We all know that finding examples of teens' and twenty-somethings' “ignorance” is pretty easy… Two thirds of high-school seniors in 2006 couldn't explain an old photo of a sign over a theater door reading COLORED ENTRANCE. In 2001, 52 percent identified Germany, Japan, and Italy as Americas’ WW II allies, but not the Soviet Union. One quarter of 18- to 24-year-olds in a recent survey didn’t know who Dick Cheney or William Rehnquist are. The world's most heavily defended border? Would you believe Mexico’s border with the United States, according to 30 percent of that same age group? College professors are shocked to find students who respond blank-eyed to mention of fireside chats or Antietam or even Pearl Harbor. Many parents are appalled that their little darlings don't know Chaucer from Chopin. Bauerlein sees such ignorance as an intellectual, economic and civic disaster in the making, claiming “the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future”, and that "no cohort in human history has opened such a fissure between its material conditions and its intellectual attainments." He is a little late with his complaint of course… the old folks have been complaining about their kid’s cultural collapse and ignorance of history since admirers of Sophocles moaned that the popularity of Aristophanes was leading to the end of Greek civilization! The Civil War generation was aghast at Ned Buntline’s 1870’s dime novels. Victorian scholars considered Dickens a lightweight compared with other authors of the time. In a Newsweek report, Bauerlein laments that "there is no memory of the past, just like when the Khmer Rouge said 'this is day zero.' Historical memory is essential to a free people. If you don't know which rights are protected in the First Amendment, how can you think critically about rights in the U.S.?" Fair enough I’d guess, but I’d also think that if our young people don't know the Bill of Rights it’s not stupidity but rather a failure of their parents, the school system, and of society (which you might be aware is run by grown-ups) to require them to know it. Drawing on history, it’s noted that philosopher George Santayana in 1905, despaired of a generation's historical ignorance, warning that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

The generation in question has been called “fatally flawed,” accused of lacking values, social awareness, or caring about anyone or anything. Author Jean Twenge dubs them “Generation Me”, saying that self esteem programs in schools combined with the Internet may be unleashing “a little army of narcissists” on society. Others argue that youth, consumed by their celebrity and internet obsessions, are superficial and lacking social skills. Busy e-mailing and text-messaging, uploading photographs onto MySpace and Facebook, and creating playlists for iPods, they have trouble identifying the three branches of the American government and where Iraq is on the map.

Bauerlein cites assorted evidence that young Americans have stopped reading books, and blames the "low knowledge levels" of adolescents mainly on the Internet. "The world delivers facts and events and art and ideas," he writes, "but the young American mind hasn't opened." Warning that "knowledge is never more than one generation away from oblivion," Bauerlein is only one of a long-line of Chicken Little critics of American culture that began shortly after the Revolutionary War, when British and French “gentry” visited our shores, and bemoaned the fact that we generally lived in log cabins, with nary a hereditary castle or opera house to be found.
Like many, I’m appalled when I see the reading, writing, and arithmetic skills of our younger citizens displayed first hand. I know high school graduates who read at what I consider a third grade level, and whom I very much doubt are able to count past ten with their tennis shoes on! I have on occasion been known to mutter something about “dumb #&%*^ teenagers” when some kid on a skateboard zips in front of me while jabbering away on his cell phone. (I really don’t know why a ‘tween-ager even needs a cellular telephone!) At the same time I’ve also been known to unfavorably mention the ancestry of adults using a cell phone, particularly when they cut me off in traffic, apparently having failed to realize that their little bitty car isn’t going to make very much of an impression on the front bumper of a forty thousand pound firetruck!

Perhaps the kids can’t quote Shakespeare line by line, and perhaps their version of American English isn’t the same thing I learned in school. Many times their penmanship is atrocious, but then my penmanship is atrocious as well. Strangely enough I’ve found that many of our kids can intelligently discuss orbital dynamics or quantum physics about as easily as they can the lifestyle of Brittany Spears. Given the deep-rooted tradition of anti-intellectualism in the United States, I rather doubt that digital technology is responsible for the dumbing down of Americans as Bauerlein suggests. Digital technology and the internet simply make it easier for us to find whatever data we might need, in what approximates a personal copy of the largest library in existence. Without I contend, having to memorize thousands of printed pages, often specialized data that you’ll probably never again have a use for. (Remember all those boring hours spent in history class, trying to remember names, dates, and places? Try doing an internet search for “Peloponnesian War” and see what turns up!) While we older “generation whatever” folks might have a full set of lumps with the digital age, we should remember that the secret is to know how to find whatever information you presently need, in a hurry, and the kids seem to have that down pat!

The next time you try to program your VCR, who are you going to call for help… the graybeard down the road… or perhaps that fourteen year old computer nerd you seem to have spawned?