Evan Miller Bauerlein Argument Is this Generation Really ...

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Evan Miller

Bauerlein Argument

12/18/12

Is this Generation Really the Dumbest?

Knowledge; is there an app for that? The novel "The Dumbest Generation" written by the author Mark Bauerlein brings up the argument that technology has made the current generation of youth, the "dumbest" generation yet. The word dumbest is in quotes because that is not exactly what the author, Mark Bauerlein is trying to say in his book, that is just a clever title for the book used by the publisher to help sell a lot of copies. He leans more toward the argument throughout the novel that this generation is not inherently "dumber" than any previous generation of civilized human beings; however they are increasingly becoming the least motivated generation toward traditional and general knowledge. He is also not saying the "dumbest" generation throughout the book but in many ways he argues that this current generation of American youth is the laziest generation, filled with the idea of instant gratification engrained into their psyche through the use of today's ever more advanced technology.

There is an underlying theme in "The Dumbest Generation" that Bauerlein refers back to throughout the book and this becomes the main underlying theme of the book. This is that despite the vast amount of information that is available through several clicks of the mouse, people of the "dumbest" generation do not take the time to use this information, especially the general cultural common knowledge that binds civilization together. The author claims throughout the book that the youth of America are not

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worried about learning history, literature or even current events both at home in the US and around the world. Their attention is instead focused on "... friends, work, clothes, cars, pop music, sitcoms, Facebook." (Bauerlein 13). These are the subject matters that current youth have shifted their focus toward. They seem to be uninformed of the vast array of knowledge they currently have access to through the Internet. Mark Bauerlein brings up several key arguments in the novel "The Dumbest Generation" to demonstrate how the surge of technology is primarily negatively impacting this generation. One argument he uses is that this current generation of American youth is facing a knowledge deficit, Bauerlein also claims that the youth do not read or have no desire to read books and novels, he also argues the point that this generation spends too much time in front of a screen, which he calls "Screen Time" (Bauerlein 70).

One of his major arguments in the novel is the lack of reading and desire to read that the Americans of this "dumbest" generation demonstrate. He seems to be correct in his research and observations of this hypothesis, this would lead one to believe that members of the millennial generation do not have the fondness of reading that previous generations have shown. Instead they display distaste for reading, especially leisure reading. Bauerlein goes into depth on the thought process behind the theory that books aren't as important to young Americans as aspects of pop-culture are to them. He demonstrates this point in a speech he gave at the University of Maryland when he states, "You are six times more likely to know who the latest American Idol is than you are to know who the Speaker of the U.S. House is. At that point, a voice in the crowd jeered, "American Idol is more important!"" (Bauerlein 42). In this quote Bauerlein was saying that American youth would "wrinkle their brows" if offered a book about the

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United States Congress, but instead the knowledge has shifted to pop-culture knowledge. This quote captures the ideology of American youth that has led to this lack of desire to read and the negative impact technology has on them in general. There is no interest in reading a book about the US Congress, it is boring to this generation, despite the fact it directly affects them. They instead concern themselves with popculture matters such as who is the next American Idol, because that is what their peers know, and therefore this knowledge will gain them acceptance to a social group. These people believe that who wins American Idol is more important than politics.

To combat this ever increasing lack of interest in reading, books have now become more like their digital counterparts such as movies, television and the Internet in one key way. Books now have to have more breaks in the text, through the form of charts and graphs in a text book; for a children's book and even novels for leisure reading the authors incorporate much more illustrations and pictures than they had to previously. This is evident the book Freakonomics and its sequel book SuperFreakonomics, these books are about using the principles of economics to find out what is causing many problems in society and also using these principles to find solutions to these problems. However the first book Freakonomics was all text there were no illustrations or pictures, the second book SuperFreakonomics however saw the addition of several pages of illustrations and graphs, pictures. Now these charts were to enhance the knowledge captured by the pages and text in the novel, however the first book got its message across without the use of such aids. There is an ever shrinking attention span among American youth.

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America's attention span is shrinking at an increasing rate, most scholar's say that the attention span of the average American, especially in the Millennial generation whose attention has shrunk over years to no more than several seconds. The reason for this decline is the fast paced life always in a hurry lifestyle of the average American. However a more important cause of this shrinking attention span is the constant use of ever faster technology, which spawns instant gratification mentality. If something does is not interesting and attention grabbing in the first few seconds it is viewed than there is less of a chance that Americans will continue to view that content. One example of this shrinking attention span is in advertisements, specifically television commercials. Advertisers are finding it to be much more profitable to show a 15 second advertisement as opposed to the current standard of 30 seconds or the longer 60 second advertisement. The reason for this change is the following fact presented in the Chicago Daily Herald, "On average, about 5 percent of an audience viewing a 15-second commercial will give up on it. The number jumps to about 6 percent for 30 seconds and 6.5 percent for 60 seconds, says Jeff Boehme, chief research officer for Kantar Media." (Fredrix 1). This quote demonstrates the shrinking attention span which is caused by the instant gratification of the current technology. This shrinking attention span is not only toward books and reading, it is also clear in television and the Internet. To get their message across advertisers have now resorted to only 15 second ads which will flash the product and a price on the screen, just enough information to get their message across without losing the audience.

Mark Bauerlein also claims throughout his novel "The Dumbest Generation" that there is a knowledge deficit occurring in this nation among the youth of America. While

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this may be true for some individuals and specific groups of people, this claim is a huge generalization, which does not tell the whole story of American youth. The best evidence from the book for this vast overgeneralization is right at the start when Bauerlein uses Jay Leno's "jaywalking" as an example of this knowledge deficit. In this segment Leno walks around the streets of Los Angeles right outside his studio, and asks general knowledge questions to pedestrians walking around on the streets. These questions include such things as where does the pope live, what is another name for the war between the states, and how many stars are on the US flag. The answers to these questions that are seen on the air are "England, how are we supposed to know that off the top of our heads, and 52 stars" respectively (Bauerlein 12-13). Any content that is shown on the Tonight Show has to go through an editor, and since Leno usually is going for laughs in his programming, the people who actually know the answers to the "jaywalking" questions end up out of the segment and only the stupid and funny answers remain to be shown on national television. Due to this editing process there is no way to know how many people Leno had to interview to get the response he wanted, but not everyone answered the question horribly wrong, which is why this segment does not accurately depict the youth of America as Bauerlein claims it does, rather it shows the extremes people who are ignorant to common knowledge which happened in every generation.

Technology may not also be the only factor why these subjects on the Tonight Show which also needs to be taken into consideration. Many other factors can influence a person's knowledge or ability to learn. One factor that may come into play is economic factors at work in that area. The people interviewed are most likely residents of Los

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Angeles, which is a large city. Inner city schools do not have the resources that suburban schools are able to acquire, which is a factor in educational advancement. There is also a lower graduation rate among inner city schools compared to suburban schools; the average separation of graduation rates is shown in the New York Times, "the average high school graduation rate in the nation's 50 largest cities was 53 percent, compared with 71 percent in the suburbs." (Dillon 1). This data comes from a nationwide study conducted about this subject matter, it also showed the highest gap in urban area to its suburbs which is Cleveland, Ohio with a 38% graduation rate and its suburbs have an 81% graduation rate. This disconnection could explain some of the comical and downright ignorant answers given by pedestrians on Leno's "jaywalking" segment of "The Tonight Show."

Mark Bauerlein gave evidence to support the theory that the youth of America do not know as much common knowledge as previous generations knew. Bauerlein cites the American Council of Trustees and Alumni study from the year 2000, in this study they gave a test about general Historical knowledge to seniors at the top 55 Universities in the country and found some astonishing results,

How did seniors from our nation's top colleges and universities do? They flunked. Four out of five -- 81% -- of seniors from the top 55 colleges and universities in the United States received a grade of D or F. They could not identify Valley Forge, or words from the Gettysburg Address, or even the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution. (Neal 2)

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Although this quote seems to prove Bauerlein right in his argument that American youth don't have general historical knowledge, this quote shows the overgeneralization that Bauerlein uses occasionally in his novel. Bauerlein overgeneralizes due to the fact that in this study done despite the subjects being from top Universities, this is too small of a sample to say that the whole generation is lacking knowledge. The total population of the generation Bauerlein discusses in his novel from birth to age 30, consists of about 100 million people. If the whole population in this age group was surveyed, minus those who cannot yet read or write; the numbers statistically should even out.

The data presented by the quote is also slightly out of date, because it was written up twelve years ago in 2000. A lot can happen to reform the situation in that large a period of time. A study done by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences dealing with younger students than the first study. These students are in elementary and secondary school in grades four, eight, and twelve, this group represents youth who have grown up with most people having cell phones, broadband internet and enhanced television and video games. This study conducted in 2007 states, that there was general improvement to general historical knowledge among all age groups tested which includes a broader range of youth, from all different income levels and ethnicities. The trend of this research which is based on the NAEP assessment, which is the abbreviation of the national assessment of educational progress, demonstrates that high school students have improved their general history knowledge when compared to the group tested in 1994 (Lee and Weiss) . This data is significant because this generation grew up with this technology constantly being around them. The results of this study then seem to suggest that those who have grown

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up with this are not being affected by the so called "knowledge deficit" facing American youth. The fact that the scores of the tests improved from what they were in 1994 is the most interesting part of the whole matter, this may suggest that current youth have figured out how to use the vast array of technology to their advantage. They could be reversing the previously thought knowledge deficit.

Another point that Bauerlein discusses in his novel is that people, especially youth spend too much time staring at a screen, in the form of television, computers, and smartphones, rather than engaging in activities that would help them in their daily lives, and future professional and school careers. These activities that youth are engaging less and less in, for the use of technologies, would be activities like exercising, through team sports and individual activities, and more specific to the book reading is now less popular, which has been discussed in an earlier section. Bauerlein presents strong evidence to support his theory, this evidence comes from a Kaiser Foundation study called "Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year Olds". The results of this study have shown some very important statistical facts about the time youth spend using different technologies. It found that on average people of this age group spend per day over three hours watching television, 49 minutes playing video games, and 48 minutes online (Bauerlein 77). If one engages in this schedule every day, then in one week they will have spent a grand total of 2,065 minutes or 31.4 hours in front of a screen. This is an astonishing number even in this modern plugged in society. This does show validity to Bauerlein's argument, this does appear to be too much time in front of a screen, time that could be spent on other possibly more beneficial activities.

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