Review: The Dumbest Generation - How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future by Mark Bauerlein

by Kevin Eagan

It is an inevitability that with every generational change, the older generation will complain about the new generation and reminisce on the past - the "good ol' days," if you will. It's not a surprise when the new fashions and trends of youth culture get misunderstood by the adults who say they know better, and as those fashions and trends become the accepted norms, those youth turn into the wise adults, criticize their children's youthful ways, and continue the vicious cycle into the next generation.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, for many reasons. When cultural norms change, art, literature, and other creative outlets become more fluid, and people respond to the spirit of the age with an intelligent and relevant civic discourse. Only the old school traditionalists - those curmudgeons who see change as the end of the world as we know it - lambast and discourage this healthy pattern, a pattern that has made our great democracy run efficiently enough throughout the 20th Century.

That's why Mark Bauerlein tries to distinguish himself from these old fogey stereotypes early in his book The Dumbest Generation, and states that his book is not an attempt to insult or undermine the youth of today, but to show "with empirical evidence" that those in Generation Y (or The Millennials, Generation Next, DotNetters, what have you) are truly stupid.

Despite being surrounded with more information than ever before, the generation that grew up on the Internet has become intellectually lazy, and that's not just one man's opinion, it's supported by statistical fact, Bauerlein says. He won't look at their attitudes, behaviors, or values, he states in his introduction, just their capacities for intelligence. And then he spends the rest of his book looking at their attitudes, behaviors, and values (in between his hefty doses of statistics and data), judging them unsound and lamenting the end of intellectualism in America.

It's not the fairest assessment, especially since his metrics of evaluation don't fit with his original premise. After all, can you really measure the intelligence of an entire generation based on samples of surveys and testing data without looking at their changing attitudes? Bauerlein's opinion seems to be that the statistics reveal a surprising move toward stupidity, and that this stupidity manifests itself in Generation Y's anti-intellectual attitudes.

Within Bauerlein's collected research, several disturbing trends among young people do emerge. The fact-based, multiple-choice approach to education has hampered our ability to "think historically," meaning young Americans have difficulties placing current events in relation to their historical contexts. Only 22 percent of those involved in one survey could identify key phrases from the Gettysburg Address. Yet in the same survey, 99 percent could identify Beavis and Butt-Head.

Equally, our ability to do basic math and our reading proficiency continues to drop. In a 2005 survey cited in the book, respondents aged 15-to-24 only read anything for eight minutes on a weekday and nine minutes on the weekend, while clocking hours and hours watching TV or surfing the Internet. These are just a few shockers that Bauerlein reveals, but not all of his statistical evidence points toward depressing trends.

At the same time, technology is making our IQ's go up, and Bauerlein reveals how IQ tests have become more complex to meet our growing intelligence. In theory, having higher IQ's would go against Bauerlein's original assertion that we are all getting dumber, but Bauerlein quickly dismisses this idea, saying that today's youth aren't reading enough and aren't interested in the arts in the ways previous generations were.

Despite contradictory evidence in other peer reviewed articles - after all, an author's evidence is only what he or she is willing to offer the reader - that shows young Americans are more involved in civil discourse than ever before, Bauerlein sticks to his assertion that intelligence will continue to drop until it eventually threatens democracy as we know it. Of course, Bauerlein ignores the fact that the generation before was just as disinterested in high art (and the traditionalists blamed MTV), and the generation before them also seemed more interested in teen escapism than classical music or Victorian literature (and the traditionalists blamed rock and roll).

Is this really all that shocking? Not really. Bauerlein seems to think things are different because the Internet has only given teens one more way to escape adult life. And to a certain extent, he's right; the Internet is not used by teens to further their intellectual pursuits, at least, not in the way educators would like. But as with all new technologies, the Internet is currently going through a teething stage, and it's too early to say if our new digital lives will mean the next generation will forever ignore civil discourse and become apathetic toward art and history as adults.

Although the digital age has created one of the largest generational rifts in modern history, it is not the only time America has gone through major cultural changes as a result of youth rebellion. As postwar American youths tried to make sense of a difficult time in American history, Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On The Road became a bestselling novel and rock and roll replaced jazz as the rebellious music of the day. Changes in American culture spiraled out of control in the 1960s, and as this young generation was shipped off to Vietnam after enduring the Cold War fears of nuclear war, a resentment toward authority grew. Despite what the powers-that-be said at the time, this age of American uncertainty created a new surge of art and cultural veracity that not only brought about new labels (Postmodernism, Deconstructivism, et cetera) but a new wave of tolerance and accessibility that continues today.

Bauerlein, of course, doesn't have a problem with what happened during this period of American history; after all, Kerouac and the beats actually had something to say, unlike teens today, who aren't reading, and are therefore clearly not writing. Yet, Bauerlein fails to find out exactly what is going on among The Millennials in terms of art and literature, and just like the beats and the pop art afficionados of the '60s, art is flourishing among the fringes of our young generation. With independent artists and musicians trying new things on the internet to poets exploiting their spam folders for artistic inspiration, a thriving art community has used the Internet to push new boundaries. If Bauerlein had merely interviewed a couple of his English students (he is a professor at Emory University) or spoken with some art students, he would realize that there is some hope for the future, and that some Gen-Y'ers are bucking the trends.

Although some of the statistics cited by Bauerlein point to disturbing changes in how Millennials process information, he seems to overlook many of the positive changes - and the potential for a new approach to civil discourse - that will inevitably occur as the youth of today come of age. The Dumbest Generation is certainly a necessary part of this new discourse (after all, we do want to improve), but it drowns in its heavy reliance on statistics that range from mildly convincing to flat out contradictory.

Bauerlein's approach reveals a one-sided argument, one that forgets that art is created on the fringes of society and that young people rarely get involved in these pursuits since, after all, they're too busy trying to impress their friends. The Dumbest Generation is a great book for those who already agree with Bauerlein's main thesis, but won't change the opinions of those who disagree and see a lot of potential in young people today.

Originally posted on Blogcritics.org.

Mix Bag #2: Fictitious Non-Fiction, Cake, and a Bloody Massacre

Mix Bag is a weekly feature that brings together a random collection of media and highlights why it all matters to you.

After an extended weekend off and a handful of other things to write, I haven't had too much time to peruse what's interesting out there this week. Usually, I'd say it's disappointing to put off a feature for a few days, but then I remind myself that with only a handful of readers to brag about, There There Kid is still too little of a start up for anyone to complain about Mix Bag coming out late. But I digress...

Anyway, we might as well jump right in and examine the world of cultural activity that I've found interesting lately. First, The New York Times' literary blog Paper Cuts has an interesting article up about yet another fabrication coming to light in a major non-fiction book. This time, it's not one of the infamous memoir fabrications marketed for mass appeal. Instead, it's a work of journalism that takes some liberties at truth or, as Stephen Colbert would put it, truthiness (that word makes a lot more sense now than it did when it came out). It's a book called Bringing Down the House, and it's the book that the latest blockbuster 21 was based on. But as it turns out, many sections were exaggerated to the point of being completely false; at one point in the book, for example, the team of gamblers supposedly strapped thousands of dollars to their bodies before boarding planes, which apparently never happened. There are other dramatic scenes that the real-life characters of the book deny ever happening, and this is all coming out right when 21 is out in cinemas across the country. Ouch.

There's also a collection of essays that just came out called I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley. They sound quite interesting, blending comedy with the mundane parts of daily life. Sloane works as a publicist for Vintage/Anchor books during the day, so her understanding of the absurdities surrounding literary publicity and the 9 to 5 office job could make an interesting read. I've ordered a copy and hope to read it soon. Sloane's Web site is also a lot of fun, adding art and excerpts/blurbs for her book.

There's also a book coming out in May that takes our current generation to task, called The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupifies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future by Mark Bauerlein. Despite the pretentious sounding title, the book actually looks like it smartly dissects exactly why, with more and more information at our fingertips, we keep getting dumber. Is there really a reason, or is this guy just a cranky old man? I hope to find out, and I'll probably have a review up later on.

In the world of music, things keep getting more and more interesting as the year continues. People seem in awe of R.E.M.'s latest (I'm still on the fence, personally), but most reviews seem to recognize that it's just about the best you can get from a band that's become increasingly less relevant over the years.

In jazz, I like Pete Robbins' Do the Hate Laugh Shimmy, and the album title gives the vibe of the album away. It's quirky and experimental, yet rooted in something whole and tangible. It's an excellent album that comes out later in the month.

And there are a lot more albums coming out this week. I've been on a Sonic Youth kick lately, so it's nice to see that Thurston Moore is releasing another solo album called Sensitive/Lethal. The Microphones and Man Man have new albums out as well.

Next week, the eclectic weirdos that make up Brian Jonestown Massacre are releasing their 13th album called My Bloody Underground. It's very experimental, and gives off a different vibe from some of their past work; to be honest, it sounds more like a collection of demos than a full-length LP. But there are some gems, and the experimentation is more in line with TV On the Radio than some of the blues influences of past albums. It took a few listens for me to get into it, and I'm still not fully convinced. But that doesn't matter, it's still a lot of fun.

That's about it for now, I'd love to see what everyone else finds interesting out there in the internet world.