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The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future(Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) [Paperback]

Mark Bauerlein
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (136 customer reviews)

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Book Description

May 14, 2009
This shocking, surprisingly entertaining romp into the intellectual nether regions of today's underthirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a society of know-nothings.


Frequently Bought Together

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future(Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) + The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains + Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

It’s an irony so commonplace it’s become almost trite: despite the information superhighway, despite a world of knowledge at their fingertips, the younger generation today is less informed, less literate, and more self-absorbed than any that has preceded it. But why? According to the author, an English professor at Emory University, there are plenty of reasons. The immediacy and intimacy of social-networking sites have focused young people’s Internet use on themselves and their friends. The material they’re studying in school (such as the Civil War or The Great Gatsby) seems boring because it isn’t happening right this second and isn’t about them. They’re using the Internet not as a learning tool but as a communications tool: instant messaging, e-mail, chat, blogs. And the language of Internet communication, with its peculiar spelling, grammar, and punctuation, actually encourages illiteracy by making it socially acceptable. It wouldn’t be going too far to call this book the Why Johnny Can’t Read for the digital age. Some will disagree vehemently; others will nod sagely, muttering that they knew it all along. --David Pitt --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"If you're the parent of someone under 20 and read only one non-fiction book this fall, make it this one. Bauerlein's simple but jarring thesis is that technology and the digital culture it has created are not broadening the horizon of the younger generation; they are narrowing it to a self-absorbed social universe that blocks out virtually everything else."
-Don Campbell, USA Today

"An urgent and pragmatic book on the very dark topic of the virtual end of reading among the young."
-Harold Bloom

"Never have American students had it so easy, and never have they achieved less. . . . Mr. Bauerlein delivers this bad news in a surprisingly brisk and engaging fashion, blowing holes in a lot of conventional educational wisdom."
-Charles McGrath, The New York Times

"It wouldn't be going too far to call this book the Why Johnny Can't Read for the digital age."
-Booklist

"Throughout The Dumbest Generation, there are . . . keen insights into how the new digital world really is changing the way young people engage with information and the obstacles they face in integrating any of it meaningfully. These are insights that educators, parents, and other adults ignore at their peril."
-Lee Drutman, Los Angeles Times


Product Details

  • Paperback: 253 pages
  • Publisher: Tarcher; First Edition edition (May 14, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1585427128
  • ISBN-13: 978-1585427123
  • Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 0.8 x 8.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (136 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,567 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and has worked as a director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he oversaw studies about culture and American life, including the much discussed Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Weekly Standard, Reason magazine, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among many other publications and scholarly periodicals. A frequent lecturer, he has been called one of the Independent Women's Forum's "favorite intellectuals," and has been praised by columnist George Will as "dazzling."

Customer Reviews

Parents should read this book. I. Nice  |  14 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
389 of 421 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Great ideas, once he finally gets rolling June 19, 2008
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I am old enough to know how to do mental arithmetic. Excluding the copious bibliography, this is a 236 page book that does not really get rolling until page 163. That's two-thirds of the way through. The first several chapters are a laborious accounting of all of the new generation's shortcomings. The chapter titles are "Knowledge Deficits", "The New Bibliophobes," "Screen Time," and "Online Learning And Not Learning." He marshals exhaustive documentation to demonstrate that today's kids do not read much and consequently do not have a very impressive vocabularies, knowledge of history, or familiarity with math and science.

In the last 10 years I have been a high school teacher and a grad student at the university. I would have granted these points rather readily. Moreover, most people who would dispute these points are not going to sit down and read a book that delights in exercising a postgraduate level vocabulary. My most poignant critique of this book would be that, excellent as it may be, the writing alone make it inaccessible to "The Dumbest Generation." If not them, who is Bauerlein trying to convince?

After he has successfully brushed off the dummies Bauerlein's last couple of chapters, which attempt to explain the phenomenon, make a series of very good points. We adults who are supposed to be in charge of our children's formation and education have abdicated our responsibilities. We have found it easier to cave in to them. To mistake a facile familiarity with the use of electronic gadgetry to socialize with deep understanding. To ascribe literary merit to their puerile Facebook blogs. To let them retreat for hours to their bedrooms surrounded by cell phones, telephones, computers, and every form of video and audio entertainment.
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108 of 115 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Mark Bauerlein begins his book by quoting an article about the frenzied, high-stakes world of American high school students. Students are pushed to succeed like never before, forced to spend their every waking minute in intense studies. Parents and teachers lean over their shoulders, brutally forcing them to ignore all leisure activity and focus solely on the goal of college. It all adds up to a nonstop barrage of academics that consumes are childrens lives, stresses them out, and even ruins their health.

The only problem with this analysis is that it's completely wrong. As anyone who's been in a classroom recently can testify, today's students have very light workloads. They refuse to do homework. They simply won't study. They care about their social lives, not about academics. This is the reality of the situation. If anecdotes won't prove the point, real research will. Bauerlein provides that research, citing multiple, large studies by universities, government agencies, and other reliable sources. The results are clear. We have raised a nation that lacks basic knowledge of math, science, history, English, foreign language, and civics. Today's young people are not only weak academically, but also unable to use their leisure time productively.

Bauerlein spends one chapter establishing that fact. The rest of the book is spent shooting down the various responses to it. Response one is that technology inevitably makes our kids smarter. Yet the facts just don't justify it. America has spent seventy billion dollars to bring technology into the classroom, yet our students continue to fall behind. Schools in other countries remain focused on the basics and easily outperform us.
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343 of 388 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Good Explanation of Problem But Wrong Cause September 20, 2008
Format:Hardcover
I'm a member of Generation X, and most of the items Dr. Bauerlein blames for the ignorance of Generation Y were not in widespread use when I was a teen. We didn't have the Internet, cell phones, iPods, or sophisticated video game systems, and my town did not even get wired for cable until my freshman year of high school. Yet we did not spend our leisure time in the type of intellectual pursuits that Dr. Bauerlein imagines have been displaced by these modern items. Instead of literature, philosophy, high culture, political activism, or discussing current events we wasted our time on mindless drivel. We hung out at the mall or roller skating rink, gossiped on landlines, watched network soap operas, listened to pop music on the radio or our Walkman, flipped through "Tiger Beat" and other teen magazines, played video games on our Nintendos or Segas, and so on. And I really don't think my parents' generation was all that much different as teens, although the technology was obviously more primitive.

So if teens have been wasting their leisure time on mindless pursuits for decades, why then is Gen Y so ignorant compared to previous generations? Dr. Bauerlein pretty much lets the schools off the hook in "The Dumbest Generation" but I believe that the "dumbing down" of the curriculum is the root cause. Today's teens were raised in the era of the "self esteem" fad, "whole language", "constructivist math" (aka fuzzy math), and all sorts of politically correct multiculturalism nonsense. Little wonder then that so many of them struggle with academic basics.

"The Dumbest Generation" is an interesting book, but the author's arguments in support of his main premise did not strike me as particularly convincing.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars Read "The Shallows" Instead
Some of the "dumbest" generation he describes uses in the internet in ways he cannot quite fathom. Every generation is handed something different -- and often from the previous. Read more
Published 12 hours ago by empyrian
4.0 out of 5 stars He's Talking about YOU! (and me...)
I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who plays a role in the education of teens - parents, teachers, administrators, pastors, etc - as well as anyone concerned about the... Read more
Published 4 days ago by SKB
2.0 out of 5 stars A bit of a rant
Was hoping for some good reflection and analysis on the processes of learning of our youngest generations, due to the pervasive impact of multi-media tools and information... Read more
Published 5 days ago by Jenny Cannon
5.0 out of 5 stars Too Bad
The information in the book is very useful in explaining the way this generation got to be the way they are. Too bad it is not on the best seller list.
Published 7 days ago by largesarge
5.0 out of 5 stars Well written, exhaustively researched book.
This book was an eye-opener for me and despite the horrible cover and title, the content was presented incredibly well and the amount of data used was staggering (sources alone... Read more
Published 14 days ago by Timothy Meyer
1.0 out of 5 stars Poorly written, bad arguments, little citations.
Now I am one of the first to criticize my generation (I'm 23) about how "dumb" and lazy we are becoming. Read more
Published 20 days ago by Gabriel Di Colla
4.0 out of 5 stars interesting
Bauerlein has good points but he neglects the research that disproves his claim. It is a good book to demonstrate the Toulmin method with.
Published 1 month ago by csu student
3.0 out of 5 stars Valid criticisms of today's youth but slow getting to the point
The author uses the first half of the book to list numerous criticisms in erudite but boringly repetitive prose but eventually (beginning at pg 149) makes some excellent points. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Gary Nickel
4.0 out of 5 stars Spot on
It is very interesting to learn about how today's generation is perceived. Pretty accurate on how teens live their lives today.
Published 2 months ago by ERusso
2.0 out of 5 stars Nostalgia and Scapegoating with Statistics
This book has some interesting data, but I get the impression the author had the conclusion before the research. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Sarah Guest
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Scapegoating
The youth have always been the "dumbest" demographic, regardless if it's a kid in the 21st century or that snot-nosed little pick-pocketing brat that lived down the road in 18th century London. The only difference now is that the youth are usually "smarter" than their parents... Read more
Apr 22, 2009 by Adam |  See all 9 posts
Baby Boomers ?? Hello???!!! Be the first to reply
dumbest price for a kindle edition Be the first to reply
where the author has discussed this book Be the first to reply
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