The Dumbest Generation

I put it on my wish list, looks good. Thanks.

 

man this is a short thread!!!

 

Yep, that's my generation all right!

I look at it this way, we live longer and longer, so it's taking longer and longer for us to mature.

Most of generation Y probably wont mature until they reach about age 35. They'll also probably live quite healthily through their 70's.

I think the problems are more deep-rooted than explaining it away as the "digital age". Certain social conventions that were held for many hundreds of years were eroded away with beginning in the 60's. This has resulted in a total shift in society that is still playing out and trying to find a new state in which to settle. I believe that one side-effect of this shift is a dumber population at large.

 

the culture that has surrounded me as an individual growing up may have differed from the norm and i also may have imposed pressures upon myself but i have felt the expectations of achievement and personal development on me to be in some respects extreme. consisting in partly just this sort of thing: claims of my stupidity, illiteracy, incompetence, and so on.

EDIT: i just don't think it's possible for this kind of perspective to be anything but distorted, really. in a sense the polemic may be relevant and helpful but realistically, i'm pretty sure more young people in developed nations participate in tertiary education than at any previous time in history?

 

like for example. it may be that rates of literacy in general are much higher than they have ever been before. but social networking sites where people are able to communicate makes actual levels of literacy visible in a way that they haven't been before, when less highly literate individuals were excluded from mass print and communications mediums. because shortcomings in literacy are more apparent to us, it seems as though people are less literate.

 

"If you're the parent of someone under 20 and read only one non-fiction book this fall, make it this one." naturally, assuming implicitly that people in an older generation consume an absolute minimum of reading material themselves? and the material they are urged to consume is designed to reassure them of their superiority? or something?

 

sorry i am continually posting on this thread, i'm honestly not trying to bump it or troll or be an uptight bore or anything at all difficult, it's just that i find myself slightly outraged by the position that appears to be advanced by this essay. it really seems to me that if an older and wiser generation as posited by this text really believes that kids are illiterate, they should be examining their own inability to teach that generation to read and the failures of the structures of the educational systems that they themselves are responsible for creating and maintaining, rather than abusing their children as stupid or projecting responsibility onto technology. i really hope that this book advances ways in which older generations might accept some responsibility for what it seems to be accusing youth of, because judging by numerous ongoing policy issues which continue to be voted on by americans, i find it impossible to accept that the vast majority of that country's fully adult population is any more historically or politically literate than its youth.

OK sorry and i will leave this thread alone now.

 

Frankly I do think Gen Y is screwed but not by our own hands exclusively. And I'm sick of everyone blaming the Y generation and not the previous generation. I think more than ever Gen Y has been the punching bag of the older generations. And frankly a lot of issues we can't control or have little hope to fix. We have a hell of a lot harder in many ways than anyone sense the great depression.

Here's a review and it frankly sites how I feel.

quoted from an amazon review--

This book has been reviewed dozens of times in detail in many publications, but I think it is worth mentioning that its methodology is incredibly flawed. Citing "empirical" evidence on the lack of young people's "knowledge" (without actually defining what that is), Bauerlein refuses to either contextualize the surveys (not studies) in terms of national trends (e.g., the "knowledge" rates of the generation's elders, parents, teachers, etc, which statistically are just as low), in altering trends in knowledge (e.g., towards increased abilities to mobilize multi-platform communication, in multitasking, in media production), in the increase in the amount of labor young people do for money to pay for a steeply rising cost of living, education, and health care, and the decrease in access for many young people to the hope for a good education, good job, or happy life. The latter point is key, as their parents to a great degree still maintained the illusion of the American Dream working; that is, having a steady job and working hard to climb the ladder could bring happiness. As that has not proven to be the case, with massive numbers of working poor, a tragically disparate education, health, and wealth gap between demographics, and with decreasing opportunities coupled with crippling national debt racked up by the previous generations, it is no wonder that many youth are rejecting the signifiers of success and knowledge Bauerlein seems to think are universal truths. Going to the Met or the Smithsonian does not necessarily bring knowledge. Neither does going to Yale, as 2001-8 show us so well. This is, in the end, a reactionary book that seeks to blame young generations for the sins of the previous generations, both in legacy and in repetition of those sins. A shamefully shoddy exercise for someone claiming to be an impartial scholar. Still, the book is interesting primarily because it outlines key components of a logically and statistically flawed argument, and is useful to read as an example of how to argue a false statement persuasively, or how and why to avoid fallacies in your scholarship.

 

I sense a fatalist attitude.
Why not step up and rise above what your generation perceives as road blocks?
A lack of coping skills and the inability to accept personal responsibility runs rampant in Gen Y.
Seriously. I have a 20 year old college student at home, and he even admits this is true in general about most of his friends.
We sometimes have to call him on it too.
I also see it in young 20 somethings where I work.

Every generation is plagued by problems created by the previous generation. Every generation looks at the next one coming up and says, "God help us. We are going to hell in a handbasket!"
What you are experiencing is nothing new. It's how you cope with it.

I don't think the school system did your generation any favors by adopting teaching policies that said, "Everyone is a winner, there are no losers, you are special."
Now, the real world shoots you down and you don't know how to cope with it.

 

I think we are doing the best we can. But I'll be damned if I'm going to take the fall for the Baby Boomers and Gen X's failures. I'm as many doing my best to do what I can. But its hard not to be a fatalist / Nihilist / Cynic. Gen Y is frankly doing its best to deal with a world we weren't prepared for. Our generation has every right to be apathetic. We where told one thing and handed another. I do think given time we may be able to do something. But I make no guarantees as to being able to fix the problems left for us.

 

I knew my comments wouldn't be popular.


I don't feel I belong to the Boomer generation.
I like the definition Generation Jones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones

 

I would be more generous if the argument wasn't again turned back to gen Y and how subpar we are. I'm not saying we're perfect but are at worst the same as the generations that came before us.

 

I dont think gen x is to blame for gen y's problems and frankly gen y is subpar.

 

The Dumbest Generation

You mean the boomers, right?

 

Thank you, I know I was thinking it.

 

Well, maybe you're just sub par?
Sorry had to say it. Any feelings of par-ness are better descriptors of the person judging than the person being judged.

 

My son is in his mid-20s and pretty sharp. He reads a lot, albeit much of it online. He's probably better informed than I am, particularly about technology. Most of his friends are the same ... all pretty sharp. I've been very favorably impressed with them. My ex-stepdaughter, on the other hand, is a different story. No interest in books or learning new concepts at all. Very socially networking oriented as the book states. I suppose it is a mixed bag, but I don't find Gen Y to be any more or less stupid than its predecessors.

 

I really don't know which generation I belong in since the definition of a generation is so vague, though I guess I can sort of fall in the end cure of ''generation y''. Regardless, the pressure put in today's youth is tremendously high. The baby boomer's are reaching their older years, and with that there's massive responsibilities put in our hands. Education is highly competitive, and we are expected to fix many of the messes our older generations has placed upon us. You may say we are apathetic and pessimistic but the reality is that the situation is indeed hard, and like BB said we are doing our best to leave an impact, but that does not give anyone the right to call us ''dumb''. People sometimes expect to much of us, forgetting the stupidity of their earlier years. Put yourself in the generations shoes.