8 REASNOS Y TEH PREVIOUST GENARATION WZ TEH DUMBEST EVAH!!11

[robinturner]

Dear me, yet another academic has published a book complaining about how the Internet is making us stupid. I haven't had a chance to read Mark Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, but there's a summary at the Boston Globe: "8 reasons why this is the dumbest generation". It seems to be the usual stuff: young people are stupid because they can't spell, do maths or remember the name of the President, and what is making them stupid is progressive education and rock'n'roll TV soaps LSD the interwebs. Now there may be a grain of truth in Bauerlein's book (I'll let you know if our library buys it) but from the synopsis, it looks like he is simply taking a few of the skills prized by his generation, noting that the new generation don't seem to possess them to the same extent, and concluding that young people are "dumb". (By the way, is that really the sort of vocabulary one expects from an English professor?) I could use the same methodology to show that the previous generation is not that bright.

1. Computer Illiteracy

In a sample of 50 white, college-educated males* between the ages of 40 and 60, only two respondents were able to correctly explain the difference between the regular expressions "?" and "*", and none were able to read "#!/" as "hash bang slash". Similarly, in a study conducted among members of the Faculty of Humanities at Emory University, 77% were unaware that Java was not only a type of coffee or an island in Indonesia but was also a computer language, 58% thought that C++ was a grade somewhere between C+ and B-, and 18% failed to complete the questionnaire because they could not navigate to the web page.

2. Poor cell-phone skills

Most people over the age of thirty either cannot use SMS at all, or type so slowly one would think they did not have reversible thumbs.

3. Impoverished vocabulary

Large numbers of middle-aged and older people are completely unaware of words like "anime", "machinima" or "mashup".

4. Orthographical fixedness

Many older people are unable to decode even the simplest of letter-transformations, such as "teh" for "the". They also tend to be poor at phonics: in the aforementioned Emory University survey, less than half of the tenured faculty were able to read "ur" as "you're", though TAs did much better here.

5. Lack of critical thinking

Many older people are so uncritical of what they read that they send money to people claiming to be trying to smuggle funds out of Nigeria.

6. Inability to multi-task

Psychologists at the Stanford Research Institute recently conducted an experiment to measure the multi-tasking abilities of subjects aged over fifty from a variety of ethnic and educational backgrounds. In the first phase of the experiment, subjects were asked to write an essay on well-known subject; the answers were then graded by Freshman English instructors to provide a standard metric. In the second phase, a similar essay task was given, but this time it had to be performed while holding a conversation on a cell phone, chatting using IM and listening to indie rock: performance dropped dramatically.

7. Cultural sterility

Walk into any retirement community in America and you will be hard-pressed to find anyone who can name three characters from Battlestar Galactica. You might do better with Star Trek, but only TOS.

8. Ignorance of local geography

To be fair, older people often have an impressive knowledge of national and even world geography, but they are alarmingly ignorant of the geography of their home towns. In a series of interviews conducted on a typical suburban street, CNBC found that most older people were unable to give directions to well-known locations like the best park for skateboarding or a cool mall to hang in.

 

* All statistics are invented.

Comments

[trochee.livejournal.com]

ah, i love this kind of writing from you.

Local geography? you missed social participation this generation under study has no idea how to even receive a text message on a cell phone, so they are lost when a party changes location.

... more seriously, I think you're #1-#3 are entirely good points even without the snarkiness.

[blorky.livejournal.com]

"reversible thumbs" is genius.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[alsoname.livejournal.com]

Not being able to remember the name of the President doesn't necessarily mean you're dumb ... It might just mean you're not a masochist.

[solri.livejournal.com]

I dunno - I rather like that Carter guy ;-)

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

Aaron or Nick? They are both HAWT!

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

I think your list holds up to scholarly scrutiny far better than his...

As if books only came in hard-copy. What an ignoramus....

[solri.livejournal.com]

There are still people in our department who insist that the majority of sources students cite in their papers have to be print. When I point out to them that practically all academic journals are available online, I get quizzical looks. I tell my students they have to cite at least one book, but that it's just for show.

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

I think a minimum like that is good. I still remember having to do research by the old card-catalogue systems... I think it's a good and important part of education to realize not only how you research now but to have a taste of how those who studied before you did it.... Print is still a valid media, but it certainly isn't the only valid media. One would think academic institutions would be more encouraging of these little steps that protect the environment, too....

[solri.livejournal.com]

The way I tell my students to think of the library is like a very small Internet but with only the good-quality stuff, no advertising and free printouts.

I'm with you

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

My bombastic / ballistic / over.the.top ranting about "yuppies' kidz" is actually intended to bring focus on the yuppies, not the kids.

Just yesterday I lunched with a senior marketing type and, both of us being *cough* of an age, we counted the years since we'd been comfortable with conversation at a typical social gathering. It's been decades.

I mentioned that most of what passes for conversation is so predictable ("vending machine consciousness") than anyone with a bit of wit and the right (read: evuhl) motivation could easily game those situations. Clever? sure, kinda, but trite and superficial.

My short take on it? my cohort sold out. And, according to my over-arching theory of everything, you can't sell out without knowing you've sold out, if only at a deep level. Like self-deception / denial ... it leaves traces.
My point is that there's a huge appetite for dumbing down.

You probably havent' seen it but there's a new mainstream TV ad for tourism to Los Vegas that begins with "Pleasure is directly related to not thinking. Animals don't think, they just do." and carries on with, basically, "Don't think about it, just do it."
Apocalyptic, nae?

p.s. machinima?! Is that some sorta BD|SM technique?
;-P

p.s. I should have made this explicit

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

"huge appetite for" translates to "huge market forces"

If you can package trite and superficial as though it's thoughtful and incisive you're bound to be a smash hit and make a million.

Re: p.s. I should have made this explicit

[solri.livejournal.com]

Maybe, though the opposite might also be true. The one thing that's sure is that "thoughtful and incisive" on its own will definitely bankrupt you.

Re: p.s. I should have made this explicit

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

And yet, and yet ... what Obama conjured up is very like a movement, and it's on the side of the angels. I take that as a very substantial sign of hope. So: we ain't doomed, we're just really messed up!

stay well

Re: I'm with you

[solri.livejournal.com]

I only learned "machinima" recently. It's when you make short animated films using video game avatars. My first reaction was "Some people have far too much time," but some if it is actually quite clever. Of course lile most things, "some of" = <1%.

Re: I'm with you

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed, clever to the point of brilliant.
What I concern myself with: why the other 99% seem so undirected.

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

I love your #1. For #2, I'd add that not only does having to press buttons that small seem like a pain (I've never "texted"), but the reading glasses issue would also come into play. For #7, it's always possible that some old codgers might know BSG characters from the 70's show.

[solri.livejournal.com]

#2 definitely applies to me - in fact it was my incompetence at texting that gave me the idea. I don't use my cell phone much anyway, and when I do, it's usually short calls like "I'm in the supermarket - do you want anything?" When I can afford it, I'm going to get a PDA/phone with a nice QWERTY keyboard or an iPhone.

[kristian.livejournal.com]

Everything is Terrible!: Why there is Something to Panic About and Who You Can Kill to Fix the Problem! (Answer: Liberals, Arabs)

Did Fox take over publishing? It seems like there is a general American trend to title books as if they were headlines read by outraged Fox News presenters.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Haha - nicely put!

[vret.livejournal.com]

Do you have access to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Looks like there's some scary stuff in there.