The Dumbest Generation
Synthesis Essay
Complete the Culminating Conversation exercise on page 166 of your textbook. You will have the entire class period on Tuesday to read and take notes on sources and the entire class period on Wednesday to write and revise. The assignment will be due at the start of the school day on Thursday. Use MLA format for citations. Do not use a formal works cited list; just include a list of the sources you use at the end of your paper. Your paper should be 2-3 pages single spaced. Paste your paper to this document and then submit it through google classroom.
The world is constantly changing with new technology and ideas. Technology is invented and innovated in order to help improve people’s lives. However, doubts inevitably arise on the negative effects of the same technology. In his book titled The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein claims, “those under age thirty constitute the ‘dumbest’ generation in modern history.” He says that students are no less intelligent or ambitious, but that their reading habits and general knowledge are diminishing (167). He blames the digital age and its distractions …show more content…
for this result. Although, his observations about his students may be true, ironically, it is unjust to label these people the “dumbest generation” based on the level of their general knowledge, and it is inaccurate to point fingers at technology for this failure. The internet is not harmful when used correctly. Even Bauerlein accepts that teens in the twenty-first century enjoy many advantages that the men and women of previous generations did not have (source 1). However, he then claims, “the mind should profit alongside the youthful ego, the thirst for knowledge satisfied as much as the craving for fun and status” (source 1). He worries that the immense distractions of the digital age prevent children from utilizing the advantages they now have. A different author Mizuko Ito et al. in a 2008 study of the effects of digital media on young people titled Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project notices that a portion of the youth “geek out” (source 3). She says that some of the “youth turn instead [of to social media outlets] to specialized knowledge groups of both teens and adults from around the country or world, with the goal of improving their craft and gaining reputation among expert peers” (source 3). The internet opens up new opportunities for young people to develop their interests with like-minded individuals. It can be a place of productivity when used properly. Mizuko Ito et al. also praises social media. She says, “Youth respect one another’s authority online” (source 3). This is important because people have a clean slate every time they go online allowing them to be free from judgement. This is especially important for growing teenagers who normally lack the self-confidence in public.
Clive Thompson writes in The New Literacy, a 2009 article published in the Wired, about the study conducted by Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University. “From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples____everything from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts, and chat sessions” (source 7). She says, ” I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization” (source 7). She found that about 38% of the writing was outside of the classroom. This was made possible by the internet. Students were online expressing their thoughts by writing paragraphs: a major improvement from a time when the internet did not exist. “Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they’d leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again” (source 7). People may argue that technology is not always a friend. Roz Chast’s graphic cover titled Shelved of The New Yorker in October 2010 depicts this clearly. Many books surround the individual, but he chooses to ignore them as he sits listening to music with his headphones on a couch. This represents the negative side of technology. It can be misused and people can easily be distracted. Bauerlein, in this case, is right to point at technology for this “dumb generation.” However, this is a hasty generalization. Not every millennial would choose to sit surrounded by books on his or her laptop listening to tunes.
Nicholas Carr in a 2008 article Is Google Making Us Stupid? published in the Atlantic, laments the loss of his ability to read long stretches of prose. He claims to have found the mistake he had made. He relied too much on online sources that summarized things for him. He says that “they supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought….What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation” (source 4). However, this example can be discredited because it is only one personal experience. He has no evidence that technology has ruined him and his brain’s thinking capacity. In his book Bauerlein mentions, “In the 2007 Pew survey on ‘What Americans Know: 1989-2007,’ 56 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds possessed low knowledge levels while only 22 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds did” (source 1). It is clear that the older generation is more knowledgeable than the younger one. It is, however, important to note that not everyone knows every single fact. R. Smith Simpson published similar results from a study he conducted in an article in the Foreign Service Journal titled Are We Getting Our Share of the Best? He noted how most of the people in his sample had only an undetailed answer or no answer at all to the questions he asked. However, the questions he asked were certainly not the most important questions to know elaborate answers to. For example, he asked them if they knew anything about the Progressive movement. One person answered that it was LaFollette’s movement. When asked where Lafollette came from the answer was vague. The results disappointed Simpson; however, knowing where Lafollette came from is not very important (source 5). Sharon Begley in a 2010 Newsweek article titled The Dumbest Generation? Don’t Be Dumb argued that knowing unnecessary and sometimes useless facts is not as essential as being able to think critically and logically (source 2). She explains, “IQ scores in every country that measures them, including the United States, have been rising since the 1930s. Since the tests measure not knowledge but pure thinking capacity… Gen Y’s ignorance of fats (or of facts that older people think are important) reflects not dumbness but choice” (source 2). She claims that knowledge has more than one measure. She also makes a significant point when she says that “there is no empirical evidence that being immersed in instant messaging, texting, iPods, videogames and all things online impairs thinking ability” (source 2). If anything, the digital age has helped improve it. A cognitive scientist Marcel Just of Carnegie University says, “We are gradually changing from a nation of callused hands to a nation of agile brains. Insofar as new information technology exercises our minds and provides more information, it has to be improving thinking ability” (source 2). The amount of thinking ability one has is far more important than the number of facts one knows. This is not the “dumbest generation.” It may even classify as the most intelligent.
No other group of people in history has had so much information and so many ways to obtain the information than the millennials. While some choose to waste away in front of their laptops as depicted in Shelved, others choose to “geek out.” Technology cannot be harmful when used properly. It makes a vast amount of information of various topics easily accessible to everyone, especially young teens. Sharon Begley points out that according to a 2003 survey of managers, “employers are spending $1.3 billion a year to teach basic writing skills” (source 2). However, even if today’s youngsters do not have the information in their heads, they know where to find it. When the information is in their pockets in the form of smartphones, how can they be labelled the “dumbest
generation?”
Sources Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation
Sharon Begley, The Dumbest Generation? Don’t Be Dumb
Mizuko Ito et al., Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project
Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid?
R. Smith Simpson, Are We Getting Our share of the Best? 7. Clive Thompson, The New Literacy 8. Roz Chast, Shelved (cartoon)
Complete the Culminating Conversation exercise on page 166 of your textbook. You will have the entire class period on Tuesday to read and take notes on sources and the entire class period on Wednesday to write and revise. The assignment will be due at the start of the school day on Thursday. Use MLA format for citations. Do not use a formal works cited list; just include a list of the sources you use at the end of your paper. Your paper should be 2-3 pages single spaced. Paste your paper to this document and then submit it through google classroom.
The world is constantly changing with new technology and ideas. Technology is invented and innovated in order to help improve people’s lives. However, doubts inevitably arise on the negative effects of the same technology. In his book titled The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein claims, “those under age thirty constitute the ‘dumbest’ generation in modern history.” He says that students are no less intelligent or ambitious, but that their reading habits and general knowledge are diminishing (167). He blames the digital age and its distractions …show more content…
for this result. Although, his observations about his students may be true, ironically, it is unjust to label these people the “dumbest generation” based on the level of their general knowledge, and it is inaccurate to point fingers at technology for this failure. The internet is not harmful when used correctly. Even Bauerlein accepts that teens in the twenty-first century enjoy many advantages that the men and women of previous generations did not have (source 1). However, he then claims, “the mind should profit alongside the youthful ego, the thirst for knowledge satisfied as much as the craving for fun and status” (source 1). He worries that the immense distractions of the digital age prevent children from utilizing the advantages they now have. A different author Mizuko Ito et al. in a 2008 study of the effects of digital media on young people titled Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project notices that a portion of the youth “geek out” (source 3). She says that some of the “youth turn instead [of to social media outlets] to specialized knowledge groups of both teens and adults from around the country or world, with the goal of improving their craft and gaining reputation among expert peers” (source 3). The internet opens up new opportunities for young people to develop their interests with like-minded individuals. It can be a place of productivity when used properly. Mizuko Ito et al. also praises social media. She says, “Youth respect one another’s authority online” (source 3). This is important because people have a clean slate every time they go online allowing them to be free from judgement. This is especially important for growing teenagers who normally lack the self-confidence in public.
Clive Thompson writes in The New Literacy, a 2009 article published in the Wired, about the study conducted by Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University. “From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples____everything from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts, and chat sessions” (source 7). She says, ” I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization” (source 7). She found that about 38% of the writing was outside of the classroom. This was made possible by the internet. Students were online expressing their thoughts by writing paragraphs: a major improvement from a time when the internet did not exist. “Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they’d leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again” (source 7). People may argue that technology is not always a friend. Roz Chast’s graphic cover titled Shelved of The New Yorker in October 2010 depicts this clearly. Many books surround the individual, but he chooses to ignore them as he sits listening to music with his headphones on a couch. This represents the negative side of technology. It can be misused and people can easily be distracted. Bauerlein, in this case, is right to point at technology for this “dumb generation.” However, this is a hasty generalization. Not every millennial would choose to sit surrounded by books on his or her laptop listening to tunes.
Nicholas Carr in a 2008 article Is Google Making Us Stupid? published in the Atlantic, laments the loss of his ability to read long stretches of prose. He claims to have found the mistake he had made. He relied too much on online sources that summarized things for him. He says that “they supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought….What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation” (source 4). However, this example can be discredited because it is only one personal experience. He has no evidence that technology has ruined him and his brain’s thinking capacity. In his book Bauerlein mentions, “In the 2007 Pew survey on ‘What Americans Know: 1989-2007,’ 56 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds possessed low knowledge levels while only 22 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds did” (source 1). It is clear that the older generation is more knowledgeable than the younger one. It is, however, important to note that not everyone knows every single fact. R. Smith Simpson published similar results from a study he conducted in an article in the Foreign Service Journal titled Are We Getting Our Share of the Best? He noted how most of the people in his sample had only an undetailed answer or no answer at all to the questions he asked. However, the questions he asked were certainly not the most important questions to know elaborate answers to. For example, he asked them if they knew anything about the Progressive movement. One person answered that it was LaFollette’s movement. When asked where Lafollette came from the answer was vague. The results disappointed Simpson; however, knowing where Lafollette came from is not very important (source 5). Sharon Begley in a 2010 Newsweek article titled The Dumbest Generation? Don’t Be Dumb argued that knowing unnecessary and sometimes useless facts is not as essential as being able to think critically and logically (source 2). She explains, “IQ scores in every country that measures them, including the United States, have been rising since the 1930s. Since the tests measure not knowledge but pure thinking capacity… Gen Y’s ignorance of fats (or of facts that older people think are important) reflects not dumbness but choice” (source 2). She claims that knowledge has more than one measure. She also makes a significant point when she says that “there is no empirical evidence that being immersed in instant messaging, texting, iPods, videogames and all things online impairs thinking ability” (source 2). If anything, the digital age has helped improve it. A cognitive scientist Marcel Just of Carnegie University says, “We are gradually changing from a nation of callused hands to a nation of agile brains. Insofar as new information technology exercises our minds and provides more information, it has to be improving thinking ability” (source 2). The amount of thinking ability one has is far more important than the number of facts one knows. This is not the “dumbest generation.” It may even classify as the most intelligent.
No other group of people in history has had so much information and so many ways to obtain the information than the millennials. While some choose to waste away in front of their laptops as depicted in Shelved, others choose to “geek out.” Technology cannot be harmful when used properly. It makes a vast amount of information of various topics easily accessible to everyone, especially young teens. Sharon Begley points out that according to a 2003 survey of managers, “employers are spending $1.3 billion a year to teach basic writing skills” (source 2). However, even if today’s youngsters do not have the information in their heads, they know where to find it. When the information is in their pockets in the form of smartphones, how can they be labelled the “dumbest
generation?”
Sources Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation
Sharon Begley, The Dumbest Generation? Don’t Be Dumb
Mizuko Ito et al., Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project
Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid?
R. Smith Simpson, Are We Getting Our share of the Best? 7. Clive Thompson, The New Literacy 8. Roz Chast, Shelved (cartoon)