Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, has written a book called The Dumbest Generation that to me demonstrates how a misguided education system is failing to capitalize on the biggest technological boon since the dawn of mankind.
The dawn of the digital age once aroused our hopes: the Internet, e-mail, blogs, and interactive and ultra-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children. The terms “information superhighway” and “knowledge economy” entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their know-how and understanding of technology to form the vanguard of this new, hyper-informed era.
That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen.
According to recent reports from government agencies, foundations, survey firms, and scholarly institutions, most young people in the United States neither read literature (or fully know how), work reliably (just ask employers), visit cultural institutions (of any sort), nor vote (most can’t even understand a simple ballot). They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount foundations of American history, or name any of their local political representatives. What do they happen to excel at is – each other. They spend unbelievable amounts of time electronically passing stories, pictures, tunes, and texts back and forth, savoring the thrill of peer attention and dwelling in a world of puerile banter and coarse images.
While fifty million screwed up kids is a major problem and could have dire implications well into the future, the root cause is not the technology. The root cause is that “we assumed that teens would use their know-how and understanding of technology to form the vanguard of this new, hyper-informed era.” Well, having faster and easier access to pizza and immediate knowledge of when any one in the circle jerk, aka “Fave 5″, wanks in the shower is not exactly what was in mind with “more aware”.
Our public education system is still trying to come up to spec with a basic curriculum that hasn’t changed much since I was a kid. For thirty years the public school system has been striving to crank out a kid with basic math and basic literacy when we need to be cranking out kids with basic technological skills, like reading and understanding complicated information, fundamentals of network connectivity and security, identity protection, resource planning, data modeling, programming, etc.
Using technology and understanding technology are two completely different things. The use of technology should allow capable students to complete current primary and secondary curriculum by the end of junior high. Understanding technology allows someone to build such learning systems.
The kids haven’t failed society, society has failed the kids. I know that is cliche, but there ya go. I don’t mean in general like when the liberals say society creates serial killers, I mean specifically the boondoggle money scam that is public education. The government monopoly on education has to come to end or we will continue to fail each successive younger generation. In the end we are failing ourselves.
This rambling piece by Susan Greenfield at The Daily Mail would also seem to think we are doomed but throws pharmacology into the mix with technology.
Human identity, the idea that defines each and every one of us, could be facing an unprecedented crisis.
It is a crisis that would threaten long-held notions of who we are, what we do and how we behave.
It goes right to the heart - or the head - of us all. This crisis could reshape how we interact with each other, alter what makes us happy, and modify our capacity for reaching our full potential as individuals.
And it’s caused by one simple fact: the human brain, that most sensitive of organs, is under threat from the modern world.
Unless we wake up to the damage that the gadget-filled, pharmaceutically-enhanced 21st century is doing to our brains, we could be sleepwalking towards a future in which neuro-chip technology blurs the line between living and non-living machines, and between our bodies and the outside world.
I wonder if Professor Greenfield just finished reading Neuromancer or something. I hope this isn’t her worst case example:
Already, an electronic chip is being developed that could allow a paralysed patient to move a robotic limb just by thinking about it.
Oh my, we wouldn’t want that. I bet if Ms Greenfield lost an arm she wouldn’t be such an alarmist about such capabilities. I’m sure there were some people alarmed way back when someone first used a stick to get ants from out of the ground.
Of course there are always ethical considerations to any issue:
What would such aspirations to be “perfect” or “better” do to our notions of identity, and what would it do to those who could not get their hands on the pills? Would some finally have become more equal than others, as George Orwell always feared?
To think that there is not already a group who are more equal than everybody else is naive. Even in the less equal group there are those who are still more equal than others in that subgroup. And so it goes on down to the bottom of the barrel. That is simply the nature of things.
Hopefully, the technological advances for a longer, healthier, and more rewarding life wont come down to swallowing a handful of pills everyday. State-of-the-art pharmacology is not the best long-term solution; there is too much risk with unknown long-term side-effects. The known side-effects are bad enough. But whatever the ultimate smart, healthy and fit technology evolves I think the hope should be that many of those who are now less equal than others can someday be as equal as some.
Although Greenfield doesn’t feel too happy about the widespread prescription of feel happy drugs, with which I tend to agree, her primary target appears to be violent video games. Arguing against technological advancement in support of an anti-videogame thesis is a tough road to hoe and futile at best.
What worries me is that if something as innocuous as imagining a piano lesson can bring about a visible physical change in brain structure, and therefore some presumably minor change in the way the aspiring player performs, what changes might long stints playing violent computer games bring about?
These seriously screwed up kids we continuously see paraded on the news are a result of parenting problems, not an over abundance of violent video games. And I don’t mean bad parents either– though there are plethora of those — I mean absent parents. Most middle-class homes require two workers to meet their obligations. Holding down a full-time job, keeping a house, and raising kids is a lot of hard work. Kids are getting the short shrift.
Call me old-fashioned but I firmly believe that if one parent could stay home and keep an eye on the little darlings and teach them right from wrong and direct their minds away from the video game console there probably wouldn’t be near the concern about violent video games resulting in nefarious teen activities.
We could be raising a hedonistic generation who live only in the thrill of the computer-generated moment, and are in distinct danger of detaching themselves from what the rest of us would consider the real world.
Considering how many people today spend most of their time with faces glued to tiny little cell phone screens, I think this detachment has largley come to pass and not just with the younger generation. Few things rile me more than to be trying to have a conversation with someone who is constantly fidgeting with a cell phone.
Heck, for all we know, we might be the ones on the outside of reality. Someone on the other end of the little screen might be saying, “Dammit I hate it when she is talking to other people when I am trying to text her.” In the future maybe the world will exist primarily through the portal of a gadget. Even when face to face we will still interface through the gadgetry. When you walk up to a group a people in the mall you will have to introduce them to the people you’re connected with on the net and you all stand around together chatting. Maybe the mall isn’t even really there.
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