By God we're dumb.

[Treblaine]

Well it is one thing to say that generally this generation is under-performing but he clearly is not taking this as a general example but applying the average to all people, I mean his book has the subtitle "don't trust anyone under 30". With life expectancy as it is he is saying 50% of the population can go to hell, also by the "not complete citizen if you don't read my books" implies that they don't deserve the vote either.

This is not a thesis for how to improve society, he is just trying to make some money by selling books to old people to ***** about how awful the young generation is, as if his parents weren't doing the exact same thing in the 60's and 70's.

Generally, I think every generation of every society is not as good as it could be, I mean he is complaining about our generation, that is more affluent, literate, cultured and open to more new ideas and points of view with less class or racial boundaries than ever before. I mean he is complaining that his student's are not interested in Anthony and Cleopatra!

Mark imagines the UN response: "Oh my GOD! This is awful, we can't waste our time and money on food convoys to Darfur when a whole generation of Americans are growing up without embracing classical literature!!"

 

[Danny Ocean]

Heh. Read Macbeth sometime. It's got lots of guts and swordfights.

Seriously, it does, quite funny too.

 

[LewsTherin]

Heh. Read Macbeth sometime. It's got lots of guts and swordfights.

Seriously, it does, quite funny too.

Or Hamlet.

Spoiler

EVERYONE dies at the end ^^

*EDIT* would Neo-Luddite or Technophobic be a better descriptor for this stream of inanity?

 

[Wolfwind]

That guy sure does like to talk alot....

*goes to myspace*

ZOMG, Craig and Sharon broke up!

MY WORLD IS OVER!!!

 

[colourcodedchaos]

Truly, ours is a generation of idiots.

I live in Kent, the last place in England with grammar schools. I go to one of these.

And yet still, when I have a look at the history coursework the spelling and grammar is all over the shop. I once saw my best friend's French oral presentation and half of it was in text-speak.

Still, Mr Bauerlein goes too far. He has all students down as bigoted, self-serving good-for-nothings - something clearly not the case, as the various people from working-class backgrounds with Firsts from Oxbridge and Harvard and so forth will attest. We can work hard. We do work hard. And we also allow ourselves leisure time, and if this wordsmith - currently reduced to picking his bum and moaning about the youth of today on the Internet - has something against that, then I will gladly help him remove his head from his arse.

 

[sammyfreak]

I like this guy, alot. Great literature mature with age, great art becomes more relevant as time goes by. People who dissmiss stuff just become it's old are twats.

People who dismiss things just because they are new are same. There feels a distinct disdain for all that is new to learn and do in this guy's speech.

Newer generations can't possibly learn all the stuff their parents did, to the degree they did, as well as about computers, various programs, how to use the internet most effectively, using various tech, etc. Moore's Law has shown the processing power of our tech to be doubling every couple of years, which allows more functionality and therefore more complexity in their uses. How many of our parents are as versed and comfortable with computers and other tech as this younger generation?

This lack of knowledge of Shakespeare, while sad, is a reflection of the world in which we live. And kids aren't going to the library these days cuz they're doing research online and ordering books from Amazon.

Also, until we can start paying the educators of these "ignorant and lazy" children what they are worth so top people in their respective fields are teaching the children, I lay less of the blame on the children, than on those people over 40 who put those ridiculous salaries in place.

I guess you a quite right, my reply was mostly a knee-jerk reaction of positivty to somebody promoting old stuff. While I definately enjoy pop-culture as much as the next bloke the idea that older art should be forgotten strikes me as quite horrible. My statement about art maturing with age might be a bit phoney, but time does help filter the weeds from the grain. Is Dovstoevsky still as relevant today as he way in his time? Not all of his work, some of it is to a very high degree tied into his own age, but the majority of it (atleast of his later books) is just as relevant, Raskolnikov and Algala Ivanova still walk this earth. But alot of truly classic art is out of the reach of most kids, it's not that they can't find it, but how many 16 year olds could read Ulysses or Beyond Good and Evil? Only a handfull at best.

While world history does take slightly less relevance to me then cultural I find that both are very crucial to our collective identity as a society and in understanding the world today. Hamlet might not be the deepest or easiest to absord pieace of philosophy for it's subjects, but it is a essential part of our "DNA".

It would seem to me that the main misstake of the author is that he doesn't seem to value cultural history in general then the pop-culture of his age, are we supposed to replace our Coldplay albums with Beethoven or Led Zeppelin (neither, there is room for all ofcourse). Alot of contemporary art is made so that the people in that day and age get it, but 100 years later they might be clueless. Imagine our great great great grandchildren watching The Matrix or Pulp Fiction, they won't get it, but what about say...Schindlers List, as long as they get the context a similar experience should be had. Who is your favorite Dadaistic painter? Who is your favorite impressionist painter? Art always reflects something and when the artist chooses to reflect something temporary it fades in time.

I do however think that the massive amount of "low quality" culture (call me a snob if you may) and information does dilute and interfere with our minds in general. We can only take in so much (this is true for alot people of all ages) and the instant gratification tends to dominate depth these days. But maybe this is just me lamenting at the general state of the world so back on topic.

Your point about us paying teachers to little I find to be very true, one of the most important groups of people in society and we collectively dismiss them by means of minimum-wage. I would prefer a good teacher over a doctor anyday (that sentiment might not be echoed by others).

Teen-agers aren't gonna read The Brothers Karamazov to eachother and they their parents can't get them to, we need good teachers to inspire our future generations.

 

[mshcherbatskaya]

While I am appalled at both the ignorance and arrogance of some of the under-thirties I work with, I'm also appalled at the ignorance and arrogance of some of the over-50s I work with. I'm over 30, so you can trust me on this. They have been saying this for over 100 years. I've got a story somewhere on my hard drive written by Max Beerbohm, a contemporary of Oscar Wilde, and it's all about the decline of the English language into what looks shockingly like netspeak! I bet a sufficient amount of digging could turn up an Elizabethan pamphlet decrying the intellectual downfall of the coming generation.

I'd also like to point out that the net is actually being used to preserve huge quanitities of our culture. Project Gutenberg and the digitization of library and museum collections from all over the world is giving me access to information I would never have found in a lifetime of sitting in my public library. For all it's massive flaws, the sheer concept of Wikipedia is amazing. This is an incredibly geeky example, but the internet and the access it gives to information is transforming my friend's SCA court from a bunch of dorks with boffers to a genuine medieval life research club.

The youth are always getting more stupid, and yet somehow, we have managed not to become a nation of drooling basket cases. For a man who deplores the current generation's ignorance of history, he doesn't seem to have much sense of it himself.

 

[sammyfreak]

I'd also like to point out that the net is actually being used to preserve huge quanitities of our culture. Project Gutenberg and the digitization of library and museum collections from all over the world is giving me access to information I would never have found in a lifetime of sitting in my public library. For all it's massive flaws, the sheer concept of Wikipedia is amazing. This is an incredibly geeky example, but the internet and the access it gives to information is transforming my friend's SCA court from a bunch of dorks with boffers to a genuine medieval life research club.

Gutenberg existed way before the internet I recall, true heroes of our world they are.

 

[al_banzon]

I remember when my father would tell me not do something because it would fail. It only made me want to do it more. (Who am I kidding, I still act like that) The older generation simply wants to stop the younger generation from making the same mistakes. The younger generation wants to, and this is paraphrasing every young person in America, "do what I want." Is this guy a bit pretentious? Sure. Is he actively trying to seek the utter destruction of freedom and happiness for teens? I'm going to go with no. Recognize this article for what it is; a challenge. This is a well educated individual with alot of life experience teaching and shaping kids just like us, and he is saying he is worried. The least we could do is listen...Or we could tell him how wrong he is because we've been in complete control of our lives up to this point and should avoid rexamining our lifestyles if at all possible.

Just my humble opinion.

I'm pretty sure this was waaaay back up the post, but whatever. Anyway, most of you guys here make a valid point. The man in the vid, although a bit pretentious, does seem to be genuinely concerned about how the younger generation is developing. I was never really one to learn about history, people and art etc. etc., for I tended to focus more on science.(Reading encyclopedia articles at 7 and up... I'm no Einstein, I just liked everything under the title "Animals") Do we really have to be always 100% in tune with politics and culture, in the past and the present? Quite frankly, I'm pretty out of it, being in Canada, I barely know what's happening in Ottawa. However, I don't think I would fall under the category of "dumb", either. I understand the concept of E=MC2, plasma, most of the inner workings of the human body, but HELL if I know what the Tories are up to, or whoever Britney Spears is dating. When does one fall into the category of "Dumb"?

 

[manicfoot]

I quite honestly can't see what is so bad about the internet. I've learned so much from looking up stuff on Wikipedia when I can't sleep. It's just more accessible than going to a library. This guy just seems to be scared of something he doesn't understand. He got into foreign films by going to a festival. Those festivals still exist, and more people know about them because of the INTERNET.
Sure, the internet is bad in some respects but you can also learn anything, from musical instruments to Japansese, and for free most of the time. The people who simply use the internet for facebook/whatever wouldn't have bothered learning at a library or going to a film festival anyway. Sloth and apathy have been around for as long as we have.

 

[_Serendipity_]

The video is quite a bit less crazy than most of the posts seem to be suggesting, but I agree that he seems to be extremely arrogant, and a pretty chronic statistic-abuser.

The main problem seems to be that he's forgetting that taste is a relative thing, and (here's where the arrogance comes in) assuming that what he finds most important is what's most important.

"They act like what their friends are doing is important". (Mangled quote. I'm sure he said somthing like that)

Well, I'm fairly sure that to them, it really, really is.


Older generations will always be dismayed by the younger. I'm still in my teens, and I'm fairly sure that everyone younger than 15 is a waste of space, in the same way that anyone over 30 probably gets a little disgusted by me. This is how it's worked forever.

- There are accounts by greek philosophers on the shameful ignorance of the current generation of students. Thousands of years ago.
- When it was first conceived, Jazz music got worse press than Marylin Manson does today.
- Radio was predicted to destroy books.
- TV was predicted to destroy radio.
- Videos were predicted to destroy TV.
- DVD was predicted to destroy video... wait, wait, bad example...

 

[mshcherbatskaya]

Gutenberg existed way before the internet I recall, true heroes of our world they are.

Yes, I know who Gutenberg is and when he lived. Not Gutenberg, father of the printing press, Project Gutenberg, the massive digital library of out-of-print and classic public domain books. Almost entirely volunteer. I used to proofread scanned text for them back in the day.

And to give kids credit, I think a lot of them really want literature. I used to be involved in the poetry slam scene, and that got kids genuinely excited about poetry and literature. Over in one of the RP threads, I challenged someone to a battle and our only weapons were poems. Afterwards, people told us they wanted us to do it again. Guess where I got the classic poems I used for my attacks. The internet. Where were people reading the poems we were throwing at each other? The internet. Where did someone who "usually didn't like poetry" find T.S. Eliot and Emily Dickinson and Mary Oliver compelling? On an internet video game forum, for godsake.

The internet is just a tool, a really powerful one at that. Just because too many people don't use it for anything more than cussing each other out or beating off doesn't invalidate the power or usefulness of the tool. Seriously, if the internet is such shit, why is he webcasting?

 

[Saskwach]

I can't quite remember where the quote was from but it goes something like this: "Each generation thinks itself smarter than the one before it and wiser than the one after it." The Baby Boomers just got a lot more time to air variations on that quote because the press was really getting its groove along when they were growing up and now it's exploded. Oh, and it helped there were so many of them.
Smarter than their conservative parents; wiser than their brain-washed children.
If our generation is actually full of dolts I blame the silly fads that rose and fell and messed with education, and all the other cluster-buggeries that have befallen teaching.

 

[randomuser83]

Michael Moore did the same thing at a university and a bunch of them couldn't name capitals from places around the world. Couldn't name the easiest thing.

 

[sammyfreak]

Gutenberg existed way before the internet I recall, true heroes of our world they are.

Yes, I know who Gutenberg is and when he lived. Not Gutenberg, father of the printing press, Project Gutenberg, the massive digital library of out-of-print and classic public domain books. Almost entirely volunteer. I used to proofread scanned text for them back in the day.

And to give kids credit, I think a lot of them really want literature. I used to be involved in the poetry slam scene, and that got kids genuinely excited about poetry and literature. Over in one of the RP threads, I challenged someone to a battle and our only weapons were poems. Afterwards, people told us they wanted us to do it again. Guess where I got the classic poems I used for my attacks. The internet. Where were people reading the poems we were throwing at each other? The internet. Where did someone who "usually didn't like poetry" find T.S. Eliot and Emily Dickinson and Mary Oliver compelling? On an internet video game forum, for godsake.

The internet is just a tool, a really powerful one at that. Just because too many people don't use it for anything more than cussing each other out or beating off doesn't invalidate the power or usefulness of the tool. Seriously, if the internet is such shit, why is he webcasting?

Do you really think I would get the two of them mixed up?

I sort of remember hearing that they used to operate in paper before the internet conquered our world. But after a quick wikipedia search I find that I am misstaken.

People should promote what means alot to them, shout it out from the rooftops, because hopefully somebody will be intrigued and find the experience meaningfull themselfs.

 

[zachbob2]

I blame the School system. and it's increased liberisation. (don't hate me, I have proof)


Plus I know many people who read Lors of the rings yearly and watch History alot. He is talking about High schoolers and I'm in 8th Grade, but my friends and I Frequently have intelligent conversations.(including a one month friendly argument about evolution between the majority of guys in my grade)

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Mark Bauerlien is a pompous ass, which makes me wish I could dismiss him out-of-hand as completely wrong... but I can't. He does bring up some good points- school-age kids these days are simply not being educated very well; they are not learning what one might consider to be vital information- world history, literature, etc. Grammar, math skills and even basic conversational skills seem to be falling by the wayside.

The issue here is that his preferred methods of doing so are outdated, and instead of seeking to leverage today's technology to make education more interesting- and, dare I say it? "Fun"- he decries the technology itself, and claims that the youth of today are "dumb" for not wanting to learn the way he prefers to teach.

One thing he seems to have forgotten (or to have never learned) is that teachers have ALWAYS had to compete with idle pasttimes. I have no doubt that Socrates had to drag Plato away from chatting with his friends and flirting with the Athenian girls of his days. The difference between then and now is that there are a lot more idle pasttimes for kids to find interest in. The challenge is for teachers to find ways to educate kids through avenues that they're already interested in- but Mr. Bauerlien is intellectually married to the old, tried-and-true, "shut up, sit down and listen" methodology.

Technology has evolved, and teaching needs to evolve with it. We are living in a time where information is literally a click away, but the children of today need two things in order to know what to do with it- inspiration and context. That's where teachers come in. Teachers need to find ways to get students interested in learning about the world around them, and they need to do so using multimedia that engage a variety of senses; simply writing on a chalkboard and telling kids to read chapters 6 through 9 just isn't going to cut it anymore, no matter how sufficient Mr. Bauerlien believes it to be.

And yes, there do need to be standards. Children need to be given incentives to improve themselves, and this whole "You're perfect as you are, no matter how badly you fail" crap honestly needs to go. Support, yes; coddle, no. Kids these days really do have vast social networks; teach them how to use the technology to improve themselves, asking questions and learning new things. Give them reasons to find Shakespeare (violence, intrigue, sex!), Orwell (government controls everything!) and Tolstoy (ordinary people caught up in historical times!) intriguing and relevant to what's going on today.

And don't begrudge them their time looking up what happened to Britney Spears. It's been happening from Helen of Troy to Marilyn Monroe. It's just that now, we can get video.

 

[zebubble]

I'm 15. My favorite TV channel is "The History Channel", I real on average 5-10 hours a week (more if I get a good book). I'm reading Fareed Zakaria's "The Post American World" at the moment. And I love the works of Van Gogh. Not everyone fits the stereotype.

While I can say that there are kids just like the ones he describes, I would attribute that as the parents fault. Dumb Parents (Usually) Equals Dumb Kids. Teach parents to raise their kids right and your probably get a smarter generation.

Also, this guy almost sounds he's saying we shouldn't be social, which is just plain ridiculous.

 

[The Wooster]

Came across this video today (http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=32094), and the guy makes some pretty damn good points.

So, Escapists and web-savvy netizens, are we really that dumb?

I read in a comic once (where I get all of my opinions on life) that there are no stupid people. Just normal people making bad decisions.

 

[Andraste]

I do however think that the massive amount of "low quality" culture (call me a snob if you may) and information does dilute and interfere with our minds in general. We can only take in so much (this is true for alot people of all ages) and the instant gratification tends to dominate depth these days. But maybe this is just me lamenting at the general state of the world so back on topic.

This is true. The forward progress of technology has increased the amount of Stuff happening, so as there's proliferation of sharing ideas, collaboration for more of the positive things, there's also more of the empty stuff.

And you aren't being snobby. It's like food and calories; there are calories from good food, which helps your body, and there are empty calories from food that does nothing for you. But the empty calories taste so good! Everything in moderation.