In the four minutes it probably takes to read this review, you will have logged exactly half the time the average 15- to 24-year-old now spends reading each day. That is, if you even bother to finish. If you are perusing this on the Internet, the big block of text below probably seems daunting, maybe even boring. Who has the time? Besides, one of your Facebook friends might have just posted a status update!
So begins a review by Lee Drutman of Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation. Gonna bother clicking and reading it?
Read the review and placed a hold at the library, #38 in line one of 22 copies on order. Apparently, not a lot of readers’ interest in a book critical of people for not reading!
I’m skeptical of his point. Every young generation has been looked upon with horror by elders for some quirk of the times. And, every generation has its share of screw-offs who never mature and end up blaming others for their lot in life. Looks like the next crop may be paying too much attention to Facebook. But, they’re no different from others before them who spent too much time doing something else for “instant gratification.”
That doesn’t mean, however, that social is threatened, as the author contends.
I know a couple kids of this digital age. They’re very “digital” and hugely better for it. They will be ready, as will others of their generation, to step into fruitful societal positions.
Once when I was teaching I asked my freshman college students whether they read for fun at all. I was expecting only a few students to say they did, in line with results of a study I had read somewhere, but I was shocked when about two-thirds of them said they read magazines or books in their spare time (alas, hardly any read newspapers). Maybe there’s hope, then, that today’s students aren’t totally uninterested in reading.
OTOH, I have read some truly horrifying examples of bad writing that make me agree that kids today ARE really dumb. It sounds like this book would be worth reading–it would be interesting to see what Bauerlein proposes as the solution to all this.
I stopped reading the review halfway through not because I’m 21-25 (I turn 23 tomorrow) but because I thought it was total BS.
Most things are.
But not birthdays. Happy Birthday LP.
When I was in college I didn’t read much for fun (except for newspapers). Felt too guilty that I should have been studying. The minute I graduated I picked up a book and probably have not gone more than a day or two in 26 years without having a book in progress. Our kids (high school and early college) see us reading all the time. I have faith that the reading genes will turn on once they get to the time in their lives when computer games and texting don’t seem all that important.
I went back and re-read the review. If you HAD gotten to the second half of it LP, you would have found some criticism of Bauerlein’s thesis.
By cutting out before finishing the review I think you kinda proved the point.
But I’d rather be 23 than right, so you win! 😀