Bauerlein is completely stereotypical and judgmental in his accusation of us being the "dumbest generation." For every dumb kid out there, there is certainly a dumb adult to go along with it. Sure, teenagers don't care and get terrible grades and act out and blah blah blah. Who's to say knowing who painted a certain picture or wrote this symphony is important? It's important to those who are going to work with art or music the rest of their lives, but do those same people need to know advanced chemistry? Or who wrote what novel? Information sticks with us when it's something we value and intend on using forever. Some might argue that you never know when you'd use it, but I'm sure we'd be just as susceptible to learning it then. I don't think all the blame can be put upon us. What if we're scoring lower on tests such as the SATs because our teachers aren't quite up to par as what they'd like to think they are? Just because they were able to learn this information one way doesn't mean we can. Each generation is more evolved than the previous one. I don't think this statement is fair at all. We're taught to strive to be individual and explore and do all these things that were frowned upon fifty years ago, such as college. So forgive us for not remembering every minute detail when we're made declare a concentration in a certain area because that's what the older generation accepts for a job these days.
One of the articles made a statement about the web encouraging "horizontal modeling," meaning we're looking to our peers more and more as role models and mimicking them, particularly through social networks. And that's ridiculous because there are plenty of older people who use Facebook now. It's a double standard, and I'd like to say Bauerlein is dumb for being so narrow minded and full of himself, it's not our fault he doesn't know how to work his computer.
I think everyone should be forced to have a basic knowledge of every aspect of learning but as you said there is no point in us learning every symphony ever composed, people want to learn what is relevant to them and most of the time a lot of things learned in schools are considered relevant to them.
ReplyDeleteI really like how Madison said that our generation is taught to explore new ideas and work on being an individual. In 50's and later years everyone was sort of brought up the same way. No one was completely different from one another, because thats how society worked back then. Just as hippies were in during the 70's, or the punk rock theme was in during the 90's and so on. Every generation has their own turn of events, and each is different in terms of education as well. I said before technology is what runs our worlds today. Our generation has adjusted to this kind of lifestyle because its what we know. We depend on technology to help teach us things because we can!
ReplyDeleteI agree completely with the statement for every dumb child there is a dumb adult. I think our generation actually focuses more on education so many more of us go to college and get mater degrees. We are not dumb just different.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Matt that we should have a basic knowledge of all things, but like he said we shouldn't be required to know everything. We have gen ed classes that teach us a multitude of information, but should we be required to retain all of that knowledge? As we grow, we will start to retain some of that, but our brains can only hold so much information. And like Madison said, we remember things that we find interesting and that are relevant to us. I love psychology, therefore I remember more of that than anything else. I don't think that it makes me stupid in any shape or form. If teachers didn't want us to use the internet for all the information we get for papers and such then they shouldn't tell us to use Google. I don't think this makes us stupid if we are just using the resources we were told to use.
ReplyDeleteI think you made a great point in showing that the things we may not know isn't all that important to our society now. Maybe knowing who composed a work of music was important in earlier times but now it s not necessary to know that and if we don't know such facts like that it won't keep us from fuctioning as a citizen. Of course having some common knowledge and general information is important, and I believe for the most part our generation does. We are not dumb, each of us have our own strenghts.
ReplyDeleteI don't think he is saying that we have to know who wrote every symphony ever composed; however, Bauerlein does emphasize that history (in particular) is important. I'll give you one scenario: Say, for instance you had a child. This child was about to make a crucial mistake--in fact a same mistake you had made when you were a child. Do you tell your child about your mistake before they make theirs, so they are able to learn from your past history? Or do you "let history repeat itself?" One very surfacey example of why we should value history--to learn from it (but there are soooo many more reasons!).
ReplyDelete