As of 2008, the intellectual future of the United States looks dim. Not the economic future, or the technological, medical, or media future, but the future of civic understanding and liberal education. The social pressures and leisure preferences of young Americans, for all their silliness and brevity, help set the heading of the American mind, and the direction is downward. The seventies joke about college students after late-sixties militance had waned still holds.
“What do you think of student ignorance and apathy?” the interviewer asks the sophomore.
“I dunno and I don’ care”—
It isn’t funny anymore. The Dumbest Generation cares little for history books, civic principles, foreign affairs, comparative religions, and serious media and art, and it knows less. Careening through their formative years, they don’t catch the knowledge bug, and
tradition
might as well be a foreign word. Other things monopolize their attention—the allure of screens, peer absorption, career goals. They are latter-day Rip Van Winkles, sleeping through the movements of culture and events of history, preferring the company of peers to great books and powerful ideas and momentous happenings. From their ranks will emerge few minds knowledgeable and interested enough to study, explain, and dispute the place and meaning of our nation. Adolescence is always going to be more or less anti-intellectual, of course, and learning has ever struggled against immaturity, but the battle has never proven so uphill. Youth culture and youth society, fabulously autonomized by digital technology, swamp the intellectual pockets holding on against waves of pop culture and teen mores, and the Boomer mentors have lowered the bulwarks to surmountable heights. Among the Millennials, intellectual life can’t compete with social life, and if social life has no intellectual content, traditions wither and die. Books can’t hold their own with screen images, and without help, high art always loses to low amusements.
The ramifications for the United States are grave. We need a steady stream of rising men and women to replenish the institutions, to become strong military leaders and wise political leaders, dedicated journalists and demanding teachers, judges and muckrakers, scholars and critics and artists. We have the best schools to train them, but social and private environments have eroded. Some of the kids study hard for class, but what else do they learn when they’re young? How do they spend the free hours of adolescence? They don’t talk with their friends about books, and they don’t read them when they’re alone. Teachers try to impart knowledge, but students today remember only that which suits their careers or advantages their social lives. For the preparation of powerful officials, wise intellectuals, and responsible citizens, formal schooling and workplace training are not enough. Social life and leisure time play essential roles in the maturing process, and if the knowledge principle disappears, if books, artworks, historical facts, and civic debates—in a word, an intellectual forensic—vacate the scene, then the knowledge young people acquire later on never penetrates to their hearts. The forensic retreats into ever smaller cells, where nerds and bookworms nurture their loves cut off from the world.
Democracy doesn’t prosper that way. If tradition survives only in the classroom, limping along in watered-down lessons, if knowledge doesn’t animate the young when they’re with each other and by themselves, it won’t inform their thought and behavior when they’re old. The latest social and leisure dispositions of the young are killing the culture, and when they turn 40 years old and realize what they failed to learn in their younger days, it will be too late.
The research compiled in the previous chapters piles gloomy fact on gloomy fact, and it’s time to take it seriously. Fewer books are checked out of public libraries and more videos. More kids go to the mall and fewer to the museum. Lunchroom conversations never drift into ideology, but Web photos pass nonstop from handheld to handheld. If parents and teachers and reporters don’t see it now, they’re blind.
If they don’t respond, they’re unconscionable. It’s time for over- 30-year-olds of all kinds to speak out, not just social conservatives who fret over Internet pornography, or political Leftists who want to rouse the youth vote, or traditionalist educators who demand higher standards in the curriculum. Adults everywhere need to align against youth ignorance and apathy, and not fear the “old fogy” tag and recoil from the smirks of the young. The moral poles need to reverse, with the young no longer setting the pace for right conduct and cool thinking. Let’s tell the truth. The Dumbest Generation will cease being dumb only when it regards adolescence as an inferior realm of petty strivings and adulthood as a realm of civic, historical, and cultural awareness that puts them in touch with the perennial ideas and struggles. The youth of America occupy a point in history like every other generation did and will, and their time will end. But the effects of their habits will outlast them, and if things do not change they will be remembered as the fortunate ones who were unworthy of the privileges they inherited. They may even be recalled as the generation that lost that great American heritage, forever.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Achieve, Inc.
Rising to the Challenge: Are High School Graduates Prepared for College and Work?
(2005).
Ad Council.
Engaging the Next Generation: How Nonprofits Can Reach Young Adults
(2003).
Alliance for Excellent Education.
Paying Double: Inadequate High Schools and Community College Remediation
(2006).
American College Testing (ACT). National Data Release, “Average National ACT Score Unchanged in 2005; Students Graduate from High School Ready or Not” (17 Aug 2005).
———.
National Curriculum Survey
(2007).
———.
Rigor at Risk: Reaffirming Quality in the High School Curriculum
(2007).
American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
Losing America’s Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century
(2000).
American Political Science Association, Task Force on Civic Education in the 21st Century. “Expanded Articulation Statement: A Call for Reactions and Contributions,”
PS: Political Science and Politics
31 (Sep 1998): 636-37.
Andrukonis, David. “We’re Not Illiterate, We’re Just E-Literate,”
USA Today,
Generation Next blog (22 Aug 2006).
AOL Red Page ().
Armour, Stephanie. “Generation Y: They’ve arrived at work with a new attitude, ”
USA Today
(6 Nov 2005).
Arnold, Matthew. Preface to
Poems
(1853).
Benavot, Aaron.
Instructional Time and Curricular Emphases: U.S. State Policies in Comparative Perspective
(Fordham Foundation, 2007).
Bennett, Sarah, and Nancy Kalish.
The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It
(2006).
Bennett, Stephen Earl, and Linda L. M. Bennett. “Book Reading and Democratic Citizenship Revisited” (unpublished paper, 2006).
Bierman, Noah, and Breanne Gilpatrick. “Many still struggling to graduate,”
Miami Herald
(22 Apr 2007).
Bomer, Randy. “President’s Update: Rational Policy for Adolescent Literacy,”
The Council Chronicle
(March 2005).
Book Industry Study Group.
Book Industry Trends 2006
(2006).
Bradbury, Ray.
Fahrenheit 451
(1953).
Brookings Institution, Brown Center.
Report on American Education,
“Part II: Do Students Have Too Much Homework?” (2003).
———.
How Well Are Students Learning?
(2006).
Brooks, David. “The Organization Kid,”
Atlantic Monthly
(April 2001).
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The American Time Use Survey
().
———.
Consumer Expenditure Survey
().
Bush, George W. Letter on American Competitiveness Initiative, 2 Feb 2006 ().
Business Roundtable.
Tapping America’s Potential: The Education for Innovation Initiative
(2005).
Carlson, Scott. “The Net Generation in the Classroom,”
Chronicle of Higher Education
(7 Oct 2005).
Carnegie Corporation.
Reading Next: A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School Literacy
(2004).
Census Bureau, United States.
The Statistical Abstract of the United States
().
Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement.
The Civic and Political Health of the Nation: National Civic Engagement Survey
().
Centers for Disease Control. “Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance—United States, 2005,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
(9 June 2006).
Chronicle of Higher Education.
“What Professors and Teachers Think: A Perception Gap over Students’ Preparation” (10 Mar 2006).
———. “How the New Generation of Well-Wired Multitaskers Is Changing Campus Culture” (5 Jan 2007).
Clemson University. “Computer/Laptop Frequently Asked Questions” ().
Clink, Henry C., and Harry Arthur Hopf.
People and Books: A Study of Reading and Book-Buying Habits
(1946).
College Board. T
he Neglected ‘R’: The Need for a Writing Revolution
(2003).
———.
Writing: A Ticket to Work . . . Or a Ticket Out: A Survey of Business Leaders
(2004).
Conference Board et al.
Are They Really Ready to Work?
(2006).
Conkey, Christopher. “Libraries Beckon, But Stacks of Books Aren’t Part of the Pitch,”
Wall Street Journal
(26 Oct 2006).
Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Connected to the Future: A Report on Children’s Internet Use
(2002).
Cunningham, A. E., and Stanovich, K. E. “What reading does for the mind,”
American Educator
(1998).
Deluzuriaga, Tania. “Fifth-graders Using Computers, Not Paper, for Classroom Work,”
Miami Herald
(18 Nov 2006).
Department of Education, United States.
What Democracy Means to Ninth-Graders: U.S. Results from the International IEA Civic Education Study
(2001).
———.
NAEP 2004 Trends in Academic Progress: Three Decades of Performance in Reading and Mathematics
(2005).
———.
The Nation’s Report Card: Mathematics 2005
(2005).
———.
The Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2005
(2005).
———.
A Profile of the American High School Senior in 2004: A First Look
(2005).
———.
Digest of Education Statistics, 2005
(2006).
———.
The Nation’s Report Card: Science 2005
(2006).
———.
The Nation’s Report Card: Civics 2006
(2007).
———.
The Nation’s Report Card: History 2006
(2007).
Dorman, Joseph.
Arguing the World
(film documentary, 1998).
Douglass, Frederick.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
(1845).
Downes, Stephen. “Educational Blogging,”
EDUCAUSE
Review 39 (Sep- Oct 2004).
Draut, Tamara, and Javier Silva. “Generation Broke: The Growth of Debt Among Young Americans” (2004 briefing paper) ( ).
Du Bois, W. E. B.
The Souls of Black Folk
(1903).
Educational Testing Service (ETS).
2006 ICT Literacy Assessment.
EDUCAUSE.
ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology
(2006).
Eisner, Jane. “Like, Vote?”
Philadelphia Inquirer
(19 Sept 2004).
Epstein, Joseph. “The Perpetual Adolescent,”
The Weekly Standard
(15 Mar 2004).
Federation of American Scientists.
Summit on Educational Games: Harnessing the Power of Video Games for Learning
(2006).
Fanton, Jonathan. “Do Video Games Help Kids Learn?” Panel remarks at Newberry Library (8 Feb 2007).
———. “With Prodigious Leaps, Children Move to the Technological Forefront, ”
Philadelphia Inquirer
(26 June 2007).
Flynn, James R. “Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Tests Really Measure,”
Psychological Bulletin
(March 1987).
Forrester Research.
Get Ready: The Millennials Are Coming
(2005).