In Mark Bauerlein’s new book, The Dumbest Generation, he argues that the “Millennials,” those born in the late 1980s and early 1990s, are a generation much less cultured and politically aware than generations that preceded them. In a lecture in front of a standing-room-only crowd in the Science Center Kennedy Auditorium Monday, Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, spoke about the crippling effects that the Digital Age has had on the minds of America’s young people.
The nation’s Millennials are now 18-29 years old, and this young adult demographic, now voting age, is the largest in the nation’s history. Millennials flexed their political power in the 2008 presidential election, where they voted two to one for Barack Obama. This raises the question, then, what is it that goes into making a successful voter?
Democracy, by virtue of its nature as a government by and for the people, puts a rather heavy burden of knowledge upon its citizens, Bauerlein noted. The voting public is obligated to educate itself on the issues and is expected to carry into the voting booth an historical knowledge of social and political issues that shape our nation’s history. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson envisioned a nation where the public schooling system gave every voter an equal background in American history so that voters could pull relevant information from historical texts to help them make educated decisions in elections.
Today, test scores for 12th-graders are dropping and new voters are showing increasing ignorance in tests of knowledge of simple American history. Bauerlein pointed out that high school seniors are increasingly unable to identify images of segregation in the early 20th century or even correctly place the American Civil War in the correct half-century. If we are pumping so many of our tax dollars into education and there is such a wealth of information retrievable within seconds on the Internet, why are students performing so abysmally
Bauerlein attributes the recent phenomenon to the digital age: Cell phones, instant messaging programs, and social networking sites that magnify teens’ social lives to a degree that there is little room for anything else.
As little as 15 years ago, he said, there was a distinct line between a teen’s social life and life at home. When children came home from school in the late afternoon, social contact was all but cut off; the only means of contact with peers was the landline. There was no text messaging or Facebooking; when students were home, they had to find other things to occupy their time. Often this was some sort of mental stimulation: Reading or watching the news or simple discourse among family members.
Bauerlein observed that lately the social life of teens and preteens has penetrated the walls of the household. Whereas peer pressure used to be contained within the domain of the school where physical interactions took place, cell phones and the Internet now allow kids to maintain an open line of contact with each other 24 hours a day. Kids are not removed from the social sphere simply by being physically separated from their peers, so the stresses associated with socialization now pervade life at home as much as life at school.
Because these social connections remain open at all times, youth have no incentive to remove themselves from the social exchange, Bauerlein noted. During the adolescent stage, social life weighs most heavily upon the psyche as kids try to gain the respect of their peers. With the means of constant connection available, adolescents no longer see the relevance of historical or civic awareness associated with reading, watching the news, or simply talking to their parents.
This self-absorption contributes to the problem of lack of political awareness among young voting-age people. Bauerlein sees a distinct connection between the increasing presence of social influences and the lack of significant historical and civic knowledge, and this is crippling to America’s democracy, where a voter’s knowledge of history is an obligation of Democratic involvement.
The nation’s Millennials are now 18-29 years old, and this young adult demographic, now voting age, is the largest in the nation’s history. Millennials flexed their political power in the 2008 presidential election, where they voted two to one for Barack Obama. This raises the question, then, what is it that goes into making a successful voter?
Democracy, by virtue of its nature as a government by and for the people, puts a rather heavy burden of knowledge upon its citizens, Bauerlein noted. The voting public is obligated to educate itself on the issues and is expected to carry into the voting booth an historical knowledge of social and political issues that shape our nation’s history. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson envisioned a nation where the public schooling system gave every voter an equal background in American history so that voters could pull relevant information from historical texts to help them make educated decisions in elections.
Today, test scores for 12th-graders are dropping and new voters are showing increasing ignorance in tests of knowledge of simple American history. Bauerlein pointed out that high school seniors are increasingly unable to identify images of segregation in the early 20th century or even correctly place the American Civil War in the correct half-century. If we are pumping so many of our tax dollars into education and there is such a wealth of information retrievable within seconds on the Internet, why are students performing so abysmally
Bauerlein attributes the recent phenomenon to the digital age: Cell phones, instant messaging programs, and social networking sites that magnify teens’ social lives to a degree that there is little room for anything else.
As little as 15 years ago, he said, there was a distinct line between a teen’s social life and life at home. When children came home from school in the late afternoon, social contact was all but cut off; the only means of contact with peers was the landline. There was no text messaging or Facebooking; when students were home, they had to find other things to occupy their time. Often this was some sort of mental stimulation: Reading or watching the news or simple discourse among family members.
Bauerlein observed that lately the social life of teens and preteens has penetrated the walls of the household. Whereas peer pressure used to be contained within the domain of the school where physical interactions took place, cell phones and the Internet now allow kids to maintain an open line of contact with each other 24 hours a day. Kids are not removed from the social sphere simply by being physically separated from their peers, so the stresses associated with socialization now pervade life at home as much as life at school.
Because these social connections remain open at all times, youth have no incentive to remove themselves from the social exchange, Bauerlein noted. During the adolescent stage, social life weighs most heavily upon the psyche as kids try to gain the respect of their peers. With the means of constant connection available, adolescents no longer see the relevance of historical or civic awareness associated with reading, watching the news, or simply talking to their parents.
This self-absorption contributes to the problem of lack of political awareness among young voting-age people. Bauerlein sees a distinct connection between the increasing presence of social influences and the lack of significant historical and civic knowledge, and this is crippling to America’s democracy, where a voter’s knowledge of history is an obligation of Democratic involvement.
