'Stupid kids'

It’s not a new idea: The next generation is ignorant, and our world is going to sink into the pit under their watch. We get the picture. Mark Bauerlein’s new book “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under Thirty)” represents the latest installment in an argument that has marked intergenerational discourse since the beginning of time. \nThere is no doubt that technology has in fact changed the way those of us born between 1980 and 1997 learn. We can talk to an obscene number of people at once, and while our parents had to sift through card catalogues to find books at the library, we can find the answer to almost anything in seconds on the Internet. \nBauerlein and his cohorts cite our geographic ignorance, saying 47 percent of the class of 1950 could name the largest lake in North America, compared with 38 percent in 2002. Popular TV segments like Jay Leno’s “Jay-walking” and the recent Ms. Teen South Carolina YouTube video confirm such suspicions about our stupidity.\n Yet to say that we are less capable is completely false. Since the 1930s, IQ scores have risen steadily, and because these tests measure aptitude, not trivia, they suggest that any pervasive lack of knowledge is a product of preference, not incompetence.\nNaysayers might do better to blame changing norms rather than our intellect. Advances in technology have ushered in a rethinking of what type of knowledge is important, says Sasha Barab, an education professor at IU and the director of the Center for Research on Learning and Technology. \nBarab says that the Internet challenges traditional notions of “who is knowledgeable and whose views get to be represented.” \nHe points out that literature and history are often seen as important only in a sort of ivory tower, but are not thought to be of great practical value. \nThe information age has fostered a democratization of knowledge that obliterates these barriers – a paradigm shift that academics like Bauerlein might find threatening. “We have changed the power structure,” says Barab, “(to a) much less top-down, experiential look on knowledge.” \nThe problem is that what young people need to know is changing. In a world of terrorist attacks and globalization, being able to name America’s biggest lake seems to pale in comparison to understanding how to react to changing circumstances. \nI am not championing geographical ignorance or a disregard of history, but perhaps our “dumb” generation is just responding to a new set of issues. I agree that it is important for children to be able to locate the United States on a world map, but maybe it is just as important – and this is what technology allows our generation to be more attuned to – that they know how the United States is perceived in that world.\nWe should stop the name-calling and the doomsday cries and acknowledge that if our generation is to succeed in the modern world we will need both knowledge and technology – and perhaps a little more faith in posterity.