It has occurred to me that this generation we live in today, well, is the "the dumb generation" in a way. Growing up now, we rely on the growing technology and digital world. We watch television how many hours in the day, while my grandparents growing up had none to watch. They had to make their own entertainment. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter is now the new "fad" to check gossip or know what people are doing in their lives. That what this generation has come down too, instead of learning about history or culture, it is all about the latest tv shows, what someone's status is or who has the best phone. In Mark Bauerlein's articles, "The Dumbest Generation", he stated, "The problem is that instead of using the web to learn about the wide world, your people instead mostly use it to gossip about each other and follow pop culture, relentlessly keeping up with the ever shifting lingua franca of being cool in school." Which is what I just said above. That's kinda true I feel like, I mean most people don't have a facebook or twitter, but most of the teenage population spend their lives online. I only have a facebook and with school and stuff, I am barely on it, I'll go on it everyonce in a while just to see whats going on, but I don't spend my life on it.
In class, when we were watching that video, "Jaywalking", when Jay Leno was asking those people questions, I was thinking to myself, like are you serious?? I knew most of those questions, "Who was Moby Dick?" ok that was an easy question. Another question he asked, "the boy who cried.....", the lady said woof!!!!! That should have been a no brainer. The other one that schocked me, "The tourtise and the hare". That other girl didn't know what a hare was!!!! I was shocked that most of those people didn't know the answers to those questions. I guess that just proves to me right there that this generation does focus mainly on the world today, the culture today and being social with friends. It seems that with this new digital age, we just have everything handed to us. We have high tech calculators that do everything for us, or smart phones that make our lives easier. It's almost like we've become lazy, I feel like.
In Bauerlein's one article, he sees it "as something new and disastrous has happened to America's youth with the arrival of the instant gratification go-go-go digital age. The result is, essentially a collective loss of context and history, a neglect of enduring ideas and conflicts" and that our youth today know nothing about history and politics. Which I can see is somewhat true, but not 100% true. I feel like, most of the history we learn about is somewhat boring, you have to be interested in it to fully obtain it. Our generation now is mostly interested in regular, fun leisure reading books. Most history books are boring, not gonna lie. So, I feel like we are the "dumb generation" only because it is just something we are not that interested in, we hate being bored. It's not that we don't want to learn it, we just have different interests. I know I love to learn about the Civil War, I could sit for hours and learn more and more about it. It all depends on who you are and what your interests are to learn about history, culture and politics. The world is growing, who knows, maybe the next generations are gonna become the "dumber generations".
yes i believe a lot of what Dr.B said but his book says "The Dumbest Generation"- dont trust anyone under 30 yet some people that Jay Leno interviewed we 30 or older, even the professor said most of them were over 30. So its not so much that the younger the people the dumber they are its the people themselves. When Leno asked the question i knew almost all of the questions except one or two, as most of the other students probably did. I do agree that because of technology we've become lazy and complacent,yet its not entirely our fault. The more technology we have the easier information will be given to us, because of this we have less priority on known knowledge and more priority on search for it when we need the knowledge.
ReplyDeleteEven if history and politics are "boring," though, as you say, don't we have a need to learn about them?
ReplyDeleteI agree it is a necessity to know about politics and history. Without that knowledge it is impossible to truely understand what it means to be an American. The only thing most people know about the constitution is that they have "freedom of speech," but im willing to bet most of them don't really understand what it truely means.
ReplyDeleteI think that even though history and politics are boring, we should at least know some of the stuff. I agree, it's boring. I don't feel like knowing specific dates or people will be beneficial to me. But knowing events, what happened, and what started and stopped them are important pieces. History tends to repeat itself--the recession being a good example. If politicians now had no knowledge of the 1930's recession, I think we would be a lot worse now because they wouldn't have known how to handle it.
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