Who's Generation is REALLY the "Dumbest"?

Over the last week of class we have watched a viewing about Mark Bauerlein and what he thinks about our generation. According to Bauerlein, we are the “dumbest generation”. My reaction to this is that I am pretty annoyed with how he chooses to say what he does. I understand, in a way, where he is coming from, but he makes our generation seem a lot worse than it actually is. From the online article I read and the interview we watched in class, he is saying that our generation doesn’t know anything about history, politics and just the world in general. He is saying that we rely on internet sites like google to do the work for us. Without these sites, he is saying we wouldn’t know anything.

In addition, Bauerlein is also saying that the people in our generation only use the computer for social networking purposes, instead of trying to learn about more important things in our world. The funny thing is that our IQ tests show that we are, in fact, the “smartest” generation. Also, during the in class viewing, Bauerlein questions a bunch of random people and they did not know simple stories and phrases. The thing is that most of us in class knew the answers. Half of the people that were getting questioned weren’t even in our generation because they were definitely over thirty years old.

During our in class groups, we talked about how most of the people in our generation are not even like Bauerlein is describing. Bauerlein is acting like everyone in our generation doesn’t know a thing about the world, history and politics etc. Bauerlein is looking at statistics that may even be a bit biased and basing everything he says off of them. Basically, our generation is getting a bad rep because a few people in our generation fit the statistics he is talking about. I am sure I could find people in every generation that could fit some of those statistics. 

I believe that if Bauerlein would have grown up in our generation, he would be just like the majority of the people in it. The thing is that technology has a big impact on generations. I believe this is a good thing though because without it, generations would never evolve. In the end, it is not only our generation that is to blame for this lack of knowledge about the world and history etc. The people who taught us all these years are in Bauerlein’s generation and they are at fault too. This is because growing up, they never enforced what they thought was right. Instead, gradually this older generation sat back and watched this new technology wave take over our generation.

From Bauerlein’s point of view, I can see why he is saying the things he is about our generation. When he grew up, things were a lot different. Growing up, Bauerlein most likely would have came home from school to a radio being on announcing the news and such. Also, he was probably more inclined to read and learn about history and stuff because he did not have all of these technology distractions. In addition, things were a lot more strict back then. This is what he grew up knowing so, to him, anything different seems wrong. He values what he did and learned while growing up just like the majority of our generation values what we did and learned growing up. Our values just happen to be more technology based.