Comments on: Dumbest Generation?

By: Nimminy

Nimminy — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:18:25 +0000

While I would like to thank you for defending my generation(s? I’m old and young enough to belong to two.), you might merely be criticizing a trash article.
Ah, hell, thanks, anyways.

In response to “Sam”:
“Baurlein is right! The last four words of the item 6 retort says it all about the critic.
First it was the “new” math, and now the alibi is a high-tech. age. How about just plain spoiled, pampered, and lazy? Own up to it, young ‘uns, and shape up. Your kids will be even worse.”

Own up to it, and shape up? Shape up to what? Many of the kids in our generation have incredibly selfish, uncaring, unloving, or simply put, jerks, for parents. Other have parents who simply couldn’t parent if their life depended on it. (Things like saying “No.”)

Why don’t you own up to something, old ‘un, why don’t you?

By: jay p

jay p — Sun, 31 May 2009 03:18:34 +0000

I happen to somewhat fit into the category of this generation in that i am 22 years old and many of the people i associate with are wrapped up in the myspace world. I have not read his book yet but i have it on order at my local book store. I do think a lot of kids out there today ARE dumb. They live on autopilot, don’t think out of the box, and are mostly concerned with themselves and how much battery life they have left on their cell phones. But is it really this generation of kids to blame or the propaganda and bullshit that we are fed on a daily basis from our modern paranoid, commercialized, and self-obsessed society. I also think it is silly to dismiss an entire generation. In recent history many adults have a fear of youth complex in their heads and each generation the parents always say “our generation of kids are no good and they’ll never amount to anything”. The same could be said about my parents growing up as kids in the 60s when their folks were burning all the Beatles records up.
Also, our societies standards in my opinion is developing too fast. It is getting increasingly harder to pass SATs and get into a good college when the bar is consistently being set higher in order to fit in with todays demanding job market. I’m sure i’ll get a kick out of this book whenever it comes in.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 04:37:43 +0000

I think Bauerlein is brilliant–he knows exactly what to say and how to say it. He has targeted the perfect audience and fed them what they want to hear. Now the educated upwardly mobile mothers across America have more fear to add to their paranoia list: their kids are dumb. “Oh no!”
Little Madison and little Gavin might not be able to outshine the scholarly Chinese foreign-exchange student at their pretentious Connecticut boarding school next semester! Please. Bauerlein is right, we have more available to us than past “generations” (a term I find to be completely erroneous). He is wrong, however, when he claims we aren’t embracing it. What if we’re creating new works of art online. Is YouTube not something so amazing? Myspace, Facebook… they may seem all trivial and wastes of time, but I have a hunch that we may look back at them as brilliant.
He acknowledges that maybe this is all just the older folks getting upset about the young folks, as has happened since Ancient Greece (in those times some thought reading would be our downfall!), and I think he’s right. This is America. We believe with every next step, we should improve, so there is a constant fear we might not. And we love living in fear. Don’t believe me; pick up a newspaper (Bauerlein would be proud!). If global warming and terrorism won’t get us, our children’s stupidity will! As if Mrs. Yuppy-Mother didn’t have enough to fear with vaccinations possibly doing more harm to her children than good and the neighborhood pedophile that could be the seemingly kind Mr. Jenkins next-door, now her “gifted” kids may actually just be sub-par! Bauerlein should do us all a favor and for his next attempt at scaring the shit out of us write about “The Most Paranoid Generation EVER.”
Can’t we all just… relax? I’m 19 and I know where Iraq is and that the Nazi’s were not our allies during World War II. The 18 year old taking my order at Taco Bell last weekend may not know, but the chances of that bringing down this nation are slim. So just relax…
And if I’m wrong, well then you can always say, “I told you so.”

By: Jim

Jim — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:10:29 +0000

Your reasoning has the trapings of his Bob Dylan quote. This generation isn’t dumb; they just aren’t educated like the previous ones. Of course, this isn’t everyone from this generation, but it’s the dominant culture of this generation.

But the same forces that are dumbing down the education system is dumbing down our society in general. All generations are being affected, it’s just that the current generation never had the opportunity to gain sufficient knowledge before it got corrupted. The problem spans all generations.

Sadly our wealth has made us undisciplined, impetuous, callous, self-centered, and dellusional. Now infuse these attributes into the poorly educated young generation, and it makes you look dumber than you really are.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:30:12 +0000

Baurlein is right! The last four words of the item 6 retort says it all about the critic.
First it was the “new” math, and now the alibi is a high-tech. age. How about just plain spoiled, pampered, and lazy? Own up to it, young ‘uns, and shape up. Your kids will be even worse.

By: Eric Burke

Eric Burke — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:54:05 +0000

The point is that he falsely points the blame at technology and teachers (like you, apparently) without offering any data to back it up. Maybe the next generation is dumb…but I suspect if that is true, it has more to do with other issues like poverty, bad parenting, etc.

By: WARREN

WARREN — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:38:43 +0000

As a high school teacher, I see the proof every day that the writer of this book is quite right. Kids can’t spell, or memorize/remember things, or write creatively (not imitatively!) – and a host of other shortcomings. It’s no wonder the graduate schools in America are full of “foreign” students – the lazy American students can’t cut it – especially in math and science, where you do have to “store the information” in order to succeed. Nuff sed.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:36:50 +0000

We are smart enough not to pad his wallet with a book sale.
The large print edition is going to be the best seller.

By: f2point8

f2point8 — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:59:38 +0000

An example of an academic mind open so far that the door hits him/she/other-yet-to-be-determined-non-descriptive-pronoun in the ass and closes again.

By: Smitty

Smitty — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:18:32 +0000

Maybe the smart ones in the next generation will step up and give an intelligent argument opposing the authors views. That would be refreshing. I suspect instead, no one in his targeted generation will give a crap about his opinions or his book (unless he posts some porn on his MySpace page).

Consider how ironic it would be to write a book with no evidence to support ones opinion, and no one even pointed out such a “dumb” mistake. Maybe this article is just daring us to notice.