How Dumb Can You Get?: Are Young Readers Dead?
Wed, 2008-08-20 10:12
#1
How Dumb Can You Get?: Are Young Readers Dead?
Wed, 2008-08-20 10:12
#2
[url=http://thetyee.ca/Books/2008/08/20/HowDumb/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=... from the Tyee[/url]
quote:
August 20, 2008I'm a feet-on-the-ground kind of guy, so I seldom have visions. But a year or so ago, while I was in the library of the little university where I teach, something odd happened. At first, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. Downstairs, the students were busily at the computer terminals, looking up stuff on Wikipedia or checking their Facebook "wall" or doing whatever it is students do on the library computers. ... Maybe it was the odd silence that engulfed me as I browsed in the stacks, or maybe it was something else, but a moment or two later when I arrived at the shelf where Edmund Wilson's books are kept and reached up for the one I wanted, I was hit by a multiple realization.First, I was the only person browsing in the stacks. There were lots of people around, but none of them was browsing in the book stacks. I was all alone in the forest of books. Second, it became clear to me why, whenever I looked for a book in the school library, it was almost always there: because the students seldom took out books to read. The collection was pretty much intact. Finally, as I began glancing at the spines of the books on the nearby shelves, which often included the year of their publication, I realized that very few of the books there had been published or purchased in the last 10 years. That's because the library, I immediately understood, had bought very few books in recent years. Obviously, the "acquisitions budget," as it's called, had been diverted to buy the computers.
That's when I had my little vision. The spines of the books, instead of reminding me of trees in a forest, as they often do, suddenly began to look like tombstones. Each date on a book spine recorded the death of a book. I was standing in the middle of The Dead Library. Book readng was over.
Like most visions, my vision of The Dead Library isn't exactly true. There are still book readers, and books are still being borrowed from school libraries. But I notice that Mark Bauerlein, in his new book, The Dumbest Generation, has also noticed this moment of biblio-desolation. "At every university library I've entered in recent years," says Bauerlein, who's a professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, "a cheery or intent sophomore sits at each computer station rapping out e-mails in a machine-gun rhythm. Upstairs, the stacks stand deserted and silent," he adds, reassuring me that I'm not just imagining things.
In a front cover book-jacket blurb, the prominent literary scholar Harold Bloom -- who is sort of the Edmund Wilson of the present generation -- rightly calls Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation "an urgent... book on the very dark topic of the virtual end of reading among the young." That's true. But there's more.
Wed, 2008-08-20 11:13
#3
I don't know: I have never read as much and consulted as many sources than I do today at my computer screen. Perhaps, Bauerlein and Bloom should look over those sophomores' shoulders and check whether it's strictly e-mails and Facebook they are engrossed in... The book's subtitle "Don't trust anyone under 30" is probably indicative of the depth of an analysis that haphazardly smears youths to get at a real problem: the underfunding of libraries. If anything, computers and DVD players have brought more people into libraries than ever before.
Wed, 2008-08-20 11:29
#4
quote:
Originally posted by martin dufresne:
[b]I don't know: I have never read as much and consulted as many sources than I do today at my computer screen. [/b]
On the other hand, I have to say that the reading I do on my computer is different than the reading I do in books. There's not the same depth of concentration or consideration. I don't struggle with the text in the same way. The internet is good for things like instruction manuals, news, novels, and some not very demanding academic areas I'm not going to name [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img] But if I want to read something complex and give it full consideration, I buy a book or print it.
Maybe this is a neurological quirk of my own. But I wonder.
Wed, 2008-08-20 11:40
#5
Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason says its the absence of books (among other readable things).
Wed, 2008-08-20 11:44
#6
Frustrated Mess
quote:
I don't know: I have never read as much and consulted as many sources than I do today at my computer screen.
On the other other hand, you're a lot older than they are. Your experience is already very different.
BTW, did you read the review?
I like this ...
quote:
Tyee readers often say that they get it, but then go on to ask that famous political question, "What is to be done?"Bauerlein doesn't attempt to discuss any solutions, apart from a few hand-waving gestures ... perhaps the most we can hope for is Obama.
I wonder if he waved his hand in gesture when he wrote that. He almost had me too.
[ 20 August 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]
Wed, 2008-08-20 12:04
#7
Catchfire
Anyone who thinks that Harold Bloom is anything to 'this generation' is operating a few decades out of date.
Wed, 2008-08-20 12:19
#8
quote:
Originally posted by Catchfire:
[b]Anyone who thinks that Harold Bloom is anything to 'this generation' is operating a few decades out of date.[/b]
True. But beside the point.
From the review
quote:
Not only is this a shabby intellectual account, it also thoroughly vitiates a lot of the hard work Bauerlein has done in empirically demonstrating the decline of reading and knowledge. It isn't at all clear why Bauerlein doesn't blame the obvious culprits: the present-day manufacturers and advertisers of devices and especially trivial content who relentlessly push their wares upon young customers, and convince them that it's cool.
quote:
Bauerlein conveys almost no sense of the market-driven, mindless -- okay, let's say it -- capitalist, cultural context driving the present era.
I think it's obvious whose interests are served if the great mass of the people no longer read - or read only trivial entertainment.
Wed, 2008-08-20 12:37
#9
quote:
Originally posted by RosaL:
[b]I think it's obvious whose interests are served if the great mass of the people no longer read - or read only trivial entertainment.[/b]
But would these people not themselves get dumber as well, negating the advantage?
Wed, 2008-08-20 13:15
#10
Catchfire
quote:
Originally posted by RosaL:
[b]True. But besides the point.[/b]
No, it's not besides the point. The point is that the author of the article is out of touch. It's a Luddite response, and not to mention elitist, to hold reading of 'literature' (meaning high art worthy of bourgeois intelligence) higher than the reading of other kinds of writing. As martin said, those who are raised natively in cyberculture will develop different strategies of reading and different ways of thinking consonant with contemporary life. Those who think stodgy old conservatives like Bloom are in any way radical or modern consider literature to be a bastion or custodian of faux humanistic values and pretension.
Reading isn't going anywhere, natch. It's simply evolving.
Wed, 2008-08-20 13:36
#11
Capitalism has social and cultural implications as it develops and declines. As far as I can see, it's having some fairly predictable consequences in the area of literacy and critical thinking and this began well before the internet. I don't see that anyone who says this must be some kind of elitist or reactionary.
ETA: I don't agree with Bloom. I doubt the reviewer does either. But my disagreement with Bloom has nothing to do with whether he "is anything" to "this generation" or to any other.
[ 20 August 2008: Message edited by: RosaL ]
Wed, 2008-08-20 13:39
#12
[ 20 August 2008: Message edited by: RosaL ]
Wed, 2008-08-20 13:43
#13
Frustrated Mess
quote:
ETA: I don't agree with Bloom. I doubt the reviewer does either. But my disagreement with Bloom has nothing to do with what "this generation" - or any other - thinks of him.
I agree. But this I can't agree with:
quote:
Reading isn't going anywhere, natch. It's simply evolving.
The same can be said then about fast food that leaves people obese and suffering from heart disease. Their diets are just evolving.
Wed, 2008-08-20 14:02
#14
Catchfire
Before the printing press, there was no such thing as a grammatical mistake. There was no such thing as mispelling a word. Then, suddenly, print created standardized English and standards from which to judge. Guess what: those with money and control of the modes of production controlled those standards.
Now, we have the same thing happening again. As if reading Dan Brown is more literary than reading Daily Kos. We used to think owning a set of Encyclopedia Britannica was a sign of status. Now, we can read Wikipedia, see how articles develop, are sourced, and broker compromise. The printing press was a tool of democracy, and the Internet is a more radical continuation of that strategy. The problem, as always, is democratizing those tools and resist capitalist incursion onto technological infrastructure.
To compare online reading to fast food is short sighted, and a slight to anyone who posts seriously on babble, on political blogs or in manifold other places on the web.
Wed, 2008-08-20 14:16
#15
Strongly agree with martin and Catchfire.
Contempt for new technology and for youth are hardly new phenomena. Those who refuse to learn humbly from both are condemned to grow old faster.
Wed, 2008-08-20 14:26
#16
I agree.
Research is way, WAY easier with the internet, in that pretty much all scholarly journals are online these days (and all university students and employees have access through their school libraries). Probably that has a lot to do with why there are way more students on the computer than in the stacks - I sure know that if I want to find a journal article, I'm going to look for it online instead of hunting through library stacks for it.
Wed, 2008-08-20 14:40
#17
Frustrated Mess
quote:
To compare online reading to fast food is short sighted, and a slight to anyone who posts seriously on babble, on political blogs or in manifold other places on the web.
That's ridiculous.
quote:
Strongly agree with martin and Catchfire.Contempt for new technology and for youth are hardly new phenomena. Those who refuse to learn humbly from both are condemned to grow old faster.
I'm thinking Unionist, you haven't read the posted article:
quote:
Bauerlein is aware that his pessimistic findings may be dismissed "as yet another curmudgeonly riff. Older people have complained forever about the derelictions of youth, and the 'old fogy' tag puts them on the defensive."But the 49-year-old Bauerlein insists that the facts are the fact.
quote:
Research is way, WAY easier with the internet, in that pretty much all scholarly journals are online these days (and all university students and employees have access through their school libraries). Probably that has a lot to do with why there are way more students on the computer than in the stacks
And I don't think you've read it either, Michelle:
quote:
Well, if they were reading an article from the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or any of a dozen first-rate magazines and newspapers available online, that might be true. But as Bauerlein documents, that's not what they're reading. They're reading each other's post-it notes on Facebook, and viewing pop star gossip on YouTube (or YouPorn or PornTube). Predictably, the deniers and would-be refuters of Bauerlein's thesis have little to offer beyond bromides about the wonders of technology.
Wed, 2008-08-20 14:55
#18
quote:
It's a Luddite response, and not to mention elitist, to hold reading of 'literature' (meaning high art worthy of bourgeois intelligence) higher than the reading of other kinds of writing.
You might consider looking up who the Luddites were.
I could suggest a couple of titles.
Since when is "high art" something a bourgeois would be interested in? Mass entertainment, including much of the stuff found on the internets, is very bourgeois fare.
Funny how you link the Luddites with the boojwah. Some time around the age of the Luddites came the rise of the bourgeoisie. One could even argue that the bougeoisie created the Luddites. They were enemies, incidentally.
Wed, 2008-08-20 15:07
#19
Honestly, no, I didn't read the article, I just read the clip here, but I'm just telling you my experience as someone who works at a university, sees students every day doing homework and research, and has to occasionally do so myself.
I know that when I'm working, I'm often multitasking. I answer e-mails and instant messages as they come in, while I'm reading journal articles or doing work, most of which happens at my computer.
I understand why those of us who grew up offline might be sort of shocked at how much time students spend using social sites like Facebook and IM online. But from what I can tell, students use their e-mail to not only communicate about their social lives, but also to study, to set up meetings for extracurricular activities (which are often related to their studies or campus activism) and to share notes and stuff like that.
Our work e-mail was down for a couple of days recently, and I realized just how much I use it to do EVERYTHING. And I mean everything. All organizing, all planning, all communicating with everyone at work on every project I do, e-mail is central to it. All files get e-mailed instead of printed out and carried to people. Everything is done online, everything. My inbox at work is my to-do list and I use my e-mail client to organize not only my e-mails, but all my projects. And I think most others do too. When our e-mail and internet is down, we're screwed.
So it's understandable that students are also working in that manner.
[ 20 August 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]
Wed, 2008-08-20 15:20
#20
This is interesting:
quote:
Despite the "information age," the "digital revolution," and all the other slogans about access to knowledge, "young Americans today are no more learned or skilful than their predecessors, no more knowledgeable, fluent, up-to-date or inquisitive, except in the material of youth culture." The last is a point Bauerlein reiterates throughout his book. What the young are knowledgeable about is confined to their own rather narrow, narcissistic milieu.
So basically, what he's saying is that nothing has changed. Young adults are as disengaged from politics and world events as they've always been, and now, instead of yakking on the phone for hours a day the way we did when I was a teenager, they chat online for hours a day. And they spend two to four hours a day on tv and video games - yep, that sounds about right from when I was a kid.
The sky is always falling. Yes, the majority of young people are not engaged in politics and world events, just as the majority of young people ALWAYS were not. And then, as they get older, many more will engage, just like they did from my generation. It's just the WAY they engage that will be different. Instead of reading newspapers and watching television news, they'll read online news and blogs. Except that, online, they'll also be able to find people worldwide, with whom they can discuss what they read instantly.
And then they'll have the most powerful organizing tool that's ever been invented which will help them not only find like-minded people very quickly, but will plug them in to any activism or activities they're interested in engaging in.
It's definitely a new world, but that doesn't mean no one is reading anymore. It just means that people are reading differently.
[ 20 August 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]
Wed, 2008-08-20 15:50
#21
quote:
but the 49-year-old Bauerlein insists that the facts are the fact.
Clear case of tunnel vision, if you ask me. [img]tongue.gif" border="0[/img]
Wed, 2008-08-20 17:21
#22
It is when you engage the reader - of anything - in conversation, that you realize it's a matter of concern whether youth read something in depth, understand its origins, or are regurgitating something to satisfy the examiner.
It is interesting that the story described a hunt for a work by Edmund Wilson. Not too long ago I tried to find Wilson's most famous work, To the Finland Station, in the public library here. An interlibrary search found a battered copy in the Orillia library.
It is immediatel clear that, of course, anyone seriously looking for the history of collectivist thought leading up to Lenin's arrival, by train, at an entry point into Russia, in 1917, could google it in a moment.
But that is hugely presumptuous, assuming that everyone (who is meaningful?) is capable of that act of digital manipulation. Some might call that elitist, or, at least, not representative of the real world of youth - certainly it doesn't describe the reading mozaic that is the public.
Among youth, of course, there are fewer digital illiterates, but a significant number will not go past the flotsam.
I believe the authors, of the Tyee piece and the book, are looking around more broadly at what is happening out there - and being labelled narrow, for their pains.
Wed, 2008-08-20 17:48
#23
We're talking about university students in this article. These days, all university students have free access to computers in libraries and computer labs, and there are remedial courses in how to use them for anyone who needs them. Yes, students who had access to computers their whole lives will have an advantage, but that's true of anything, really.
Wed, 2008-08-20 17:56
#24
quote:
G.V.: It is immediatel clear that, of course, anyone seriously looking for the history of collectivist thought leading up to Lenin's arrival, by train, at an entry point into Russia, in 1917, could google it in a moment.
But that is hugely presumptuous, assuming that everyone (who is meaningful?) is capable of that act of digital manipulation.
Isn't it even more presumptuous to assume that something like this is the kind of criterion their work should be measured by? My 17-yr old Gothic niece can do stuff with various software applications that I can't begin to comprehend, much less assess her skills at... but those who can and take her seriously are in awe.
AND - "meaningless" as she is at her age - she manages to grokk Kierkegaard, a thinker she would never have learned about if not for the Web. I don't think much of the mental comfort one obtains from stereotyping the young using now-arcane references and speculating that they can't really know their way around Google.
Wed, 2008-08-20 18:05
#25
Frustrated Mess
quote:
It's definitely a new world, but that doesn't mean no one is reading anymore. It just means that people are reading differently.
Again, I disagree.
If anyone had a misspent youth, it was me. Yet, I could always discuss current events, I could always locate any country on a map, even new ones, and, from the time I was 18, throughout my squandered 20s, I never missed a vote and I knew and understood the concept of a ballot.
This isn't a case of old-fogey-ism. This is cultural and it is affecting their parents also.
quote:
They know who the current "American Idol" is, but they've no idea that Nancy Pelosi is the first woman speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Would that have described you as a 20-something university student?
It sure as hell wouldn't have described me as a 20-something scrounging money for beer and a spliff.
[ 20 August 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]
Wed, 2008-08-20 18:13
#26
Frustrated Mess
quote:
Isn't it even more presumptuous to assume that something like this is the kind of criterion their work should be measured by? My 17-yr old Gothic niece can do stuff with various software applications that I can't begin to comprehend, much less assess her skills at... but those who can and take her seriously are in awe.
AND - "meaningless" as she is at her age - she manages to grokk Kierkegaard, a thinker she would never have learned about if not for the Web. I don't think much of the mental comfort one obtains from stereotyping the young using now-arcane references and speculating that they can't really know their way around Google.
Well, two things Martin: One, the book being reviewed is based on empirical research, I assume. The example of your niece would fall into anecdotal. Second, I noticed you started this [url=http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=24&t=001441]t..., on Robert Jensen and you say, "this professor of journalism expounds on [b]the increasing acceptance of pornonography into the mainstream and the attendant pornification of pop culture[/b], and its effect of trivializing and disappearing sexual violence."
Hmmmm .....
Wed, 2008-08-20 18:18
#27
Maybe this is good.
quote:
Two-thirds of high-school seniors couldn't explain a photo of a theatre whose portal reads 'Coloured Entrance.'"
Wed, 2008-08-20 18:23
#28
Maybe I am just starting to get to old, but I have read this brilliant and startling concern at least 4 times in my life now. I am always reminded of an article I read while doing research in my uni days. The author of the letter was bemoaning how young people couldn't spell, were disrespectful of their elders, didn't understand the classics and so on.
The punch line. I was reading about the murder of a home child and the subsequent newspaper accounts of the trial of his killer and 'parent' from the late 1800's. The letter was on an opposite page on the microfilmed paper I was reading.
Wed, 2008-08-20 18:23
#29
Frustrated Mess
quote:
Maybe this is good.
Not if you agree with the old saying about repeating history. Would it be equally good if the same number of students had never heard (and maybe they hadn't) of Auschwitz?
[ 20 August 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]
Wed, 2008-08-20 18:32
#30
Frustrated Mess
quote:
but I have read this brilliant and startling concern at least 4 times in my life now
And in that time, as we progressed from communities and neighbourhoods to enclaves and cocooning; and as we progressed from family dinners to TV dinners to pizza pockets; and as we progressed from local businesses and local jobs complete with schools, post offices, hardware stores, and butchers, to busing, regional shopping nodes, and part-time associate positions; and as we progressed from news to infotainment to celebrity gossip and "expert analysis"; and as we progress to energy depletion, water scarcity, and food security passes to corporate control, are things getting better? What is your honest opinion?
Wed, 2008-08-20 18:33
#31
quote:
I noticed you started this thread, on Robert Jensen and you say, "this professor of journalism expounds on the increasing acceptance of pornonography into the mainstream and the attendant pornification of pop culture, and its effect of trivializing and disappearing sexual violence."
Hmmmm .....
And your point? Is it that it's OK to smear kids and the Internet because a capitalist sexist racist culture is putting out terabytes of porn culture in every media, including the much-hallowed book world?
Wed, 2008-08-20 18:35
#32
quote:
Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
[b]
And in that time, as we progressed from communities and neighbourhoods to enclaves and cocooning; and as we progressed from family dinners to TV dinners to pizza pockets; and as we progressed from local businesses and local jobs complete with schools, post offices, hardware stores, and butchers, to busing, regional shopping nodes, and part-time associate positions; and as we progressed from news to infotainment to celebrity gossip and "expert analysis"; and as we progress to energy depletion, water scarcity, and food security passes to corporate control, are things getting better? What is your honest opinion?[/b]
I fail to see what one does with the other.
Wed, 2008-08-20 18:42
#33
Frustrated Mess
quote:
And your point? Is it that it's OK to smear kids and the Internet because a capitalist sexist racist culture is putting out terabytes of porn culture in every media, including the much-hallowed book world?
And you think it is not the same pop-culture? You think there are different pop-cultures? One that vends porn and one that vends inanity? It is the same pop-culture.
Wed, 2008-08-20 18:44
#34
Frustrated Mess
quote:
I fail to see what one does with the other.
You don't see any cultural trends evolving or developing over the course of your life? Interesting.
Wed, 2008-08-20 18:52
#35
Please refrain from putting words in my mouth, it is bad manners if nothing else.
I fail to see the connection between your list and my post, or in the supposed problem of young people are not alright. If you want to explain how this perennial complaint, which I pointed out dates back to at least the 1800s in my personal experience, is responsible for everything from poor nutrition to envrionmental damage I would be fascinated to see it.
Wed, 2008-08-20 19:06
#36
I was just listening to some show on the CBC and youth were sharing their thoughts. A couple of comments they made:
'What's the point of loving a God if you don't love the people around you.'
'God hasn't come looking for me, so I'm not going to go looking for him.'
I love young people.
Wed, 2008-08-20 19:10
#37
I get lots of young people into the Library where I work.
I love talking with them. The kids are alright!
Wed, 2008-08-20 19:41
#38
quote:
Originally posted by Bookish Agrarian:
[b]I fail to see the connection between your list and my post, or in the supposed problem of young people are not alright. If you want to explain how this perennial complaint, which I pointed out dates back to at least the 1800s in my personal experience, is responsible for everything from poor nutrition to envrionmental damage I would be fascinated to see it.[/b]
Ever read Ann Landers? Every time a reader wrote in to complain about "kids these days," she responded that she'd been hearing the same thing as long as she'd been doing the column.
Wed, 2008-08-20 19:53
#39
Is it wrong to admit I use to read Ann Landers every day when she was in my local paper. In my defense it was on the same page as the comics, which was my real reason for being there.
Honestly, no really, I mean it.
Thu, 2008-08-21 00:22
#40
Catchfire
quote:
[b]Originally posted by Al-Qa'bong:[/b]
Funny how you link the Luddites with the boojwah. Some time around the age of the Luddites came the rise of the bourgeoisie. One could even argue that the bougeoisie created the Luddites. They were enemies, incidentally.
Since you seem to know something about the Luddites, you'll know that they were a regressive, nostalgic, reactionary barrier to the bourgeois revolution of production. Which is precisely how the neo-Luddites, who feel that it is technology's fault that the world is fragmented and commodified, are reacting. So you are quite right to point out their coincidence, and there enmity.
The humanistic impulse that drives the anti-Internet crowd here may not be wrong, but it is misplaced. The internet is not reducible to itself; it is not 'invented'. Technology cannot be removed from its social moment, and so if technology evokes or expresses a particular social character, it's because that social character preceded the actual technological phenomenon. Print, as I mentioned above, is another technology that 'changed the world' but now we think of it as some kind of romantic custodian of humanistic values. If you blame technology for the ills of society, you are as short-sighted as the Luddites were.
As for bourgeois interest in high culture, it is emphatic. Cultural capital, like Milton, Shakespeare, [i]The New Yorker[/i], is essential to the capitalist project that privileges such art above working-class pleasures like hardboiled detective fiction. I know you are a fan of Chandler, so I'm sure you'll agree that the music found in the pages of [i]The Big Sleep[/i] is of a quality with any modernist literature. Yet when Chandler was promoted from the pulp of [i]Black Mask[/i] to the gloss of [i]The Smart Set[/i], there was all kinds of bourgeois pride mucking about. It's interesting that you don't see the connection between 'high art' and the bourgeoisie. I could suggest a couple of titles...
Thu, 2008-08-21 04:58
#41
M. Spector
quote:
Originally posted by Catchfire:
[b]
Since you seem to know something about the Luddites, you'll know that they were a regressive, nostalgic, reactionary barrier to the bourgeois revolution of production.[/b]
This is of course a tired old bourgeois libel.
The so-called Luddites were mainly workers whose standard of living was being destroyed by rapacious industrialists and who decided to fight back the only way they knew: by attacking the technology that was being used to impoverish them.
Thu, 2008-08-21 05:25
#42
Catchfire
quote:
Originally posted by M. Spector:
[b]The so-called Luddites were mainly workers whose standard of living was being destroyed by rapacious industrialists and who decided to fight back the only way they knew: by attacking the technology that was being used to impoverish them.[/b]
Fine. You won't find much argument from me on the question of fighting 'rapacious industrialists'. But the answer is not to attack technology--because this de-historicizes and de-socializes technology, which is unabstractable. It is a product of social forces. The answer instead is to take up technology in the service of particpatory democracy. Which you will never do if you censure the current generation for being lousy readers, and remain circumspect of technological change.
Thu, 2008-08-21 05:33
#43
M. Spector
quote:
Originally posted by Catchfire:
[b]But the answer is not to attack technology--because this de-historicizes and de-socializes technology, which is unabstractable.[/b]
I'm sure the Lancashire textile workers in 1811 would have loved to hear your little speech - especially the part where you call them regressive, nostalgic, and reactionary.
Thu, 2008-08-21 05:36
#44
Catchfire
Wtf? If you want to start a thread about the nuanced and complex history of the Luddite revolution, go ahead and start one.
Thu, 2008-08-21 05:42
#45
quote:
Ever read Ann Landers? Every time a reader wrote in to complain about "kids these days," she responded that she'd been hearing the same thing as long as she'd been doing the column.
I remember reading this kind of rant... in a piece written in ancient Rome. I imagine the original predated history, going something like "Kids today... We used to be able to swing from tree to tree but now, they just [b]walk[/b]!"
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]
Thu, 2008-08-21 05:43
#46
Maysie
[img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]
Thu, 2008-08-21 05:47
#47
M. Spector
quote:
Originally posted by Catchfire:
[b]Wtf? If you want to start a thread about the nuanced and complex history of the Luddite revolution, go ahead and start one.[/b]
I could have said the same to you when you made that ignorant remark about the Luddites being regressive, nostalgic, and reactionary.
Sorry if you can't stand to be criticized.
Thu, 2008-08-21 05:50
#48
quote:
Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
[b]One, the book being reviewed is based on empirical research, I assume. [/b]
Yeah, but research of what? How many kids in their teens and early 20's know who the Speaker of the House is. How many young people can't find Iraq on a map. (How many old North Americans who grew up without the internet can find Iraq on a map? And of those who can, how many of them could when they were a teenager or young adult?) How many vote regularly. Yeah, like every generation ever, young people generally don't vote. The sky is falling.
Newsflash: kids on the whole have never been interested in the same stuff as adults. Young adults have never been interested in the same stuff as older adults. Young people have never been engaged in electoral politics all that much - but you know what? A lot of young people ARE engaged in social movements. And you know how they communicate and organize? Online.
How many 50 year-olds do you know who organize political and social activist events using Facebook event tools? I know tons of young people who do. How many 50 year-olds do you know who can design web sites and blogs? Every other kid has their own web site or blog these days.
How many kids did you know in your senior year of high school (if you grew up in my generation or older) who sat around the cafeteria discussing who they were going to vote for in the next election, and comparing foreign policy positions of the major candidates? I knew maybe one or two kids who did that. And I wasn't one of them.
And yet, somehow I grew up and, by my late 20's, got engaged, and started to learn a lot more about the world and about politics.
People have been complaining about the ignorance of young people since time immemorial. And they're not wrong - the majority of young people ARE ignorant when it comes to the things that older people feel are really important, like politics and world events. But you can put it down to ages and stages - that's not just an early childhood education process. We're all growing and learning, right into our young adulthood, middle-aged adulthood, and senior years.
Thu, 2008-08-21 05:58
#49
Just as some folks require you to say you love the flag and country and are agin' crime, it seems to have become necessary to state: I enjoy children.
I really enjoy my daughter's skills with her computer. Finds amazing things.
But while paddling our canoe last weekend, I discovered that she doesn't read much, outside of her own area of interest. I don't challenge her on it, because it's mostly a self-defence mechanism in a world that - despite all its technical achievements - is going seriously mad.
That "now-arcane" reference to To the Finland Station was occasioned by the appearance of Wilson's name in the article. But one could suggest that anyone discussing politics who has not read that work, is at a disadvantage. And their fulminations tend to show that. No history. No depth.
And martin, this is not to "smear" kids, but your "17-year-old Gothic niece" is reading Kierkegaard because he contributed to a society called "companions of the deathbound", which as any existentialist knows, would have its collective feet solidly on the ground - or under it.
Your brother or sister could have a little talk with their daughter explaining that there are other philosophical schools of thought - all (or none) of which might have become known to her through books, but the process would have more likely required some comparing, rather than turning directly to the thrills of Ms Shelly's creation and its descendants.
Susan Jacoby's book, The Age of AMerican Unreason, and Al Gore's book, The Assault on Reason, make the point about a world leaving reading material behind in favour of television and a learning system without historical background.
I thought, from the beginning, that we were discussing "young" readers, not just the intelectually and financially blessed. And will hold to that thought. Because I think that FM has summed up the collective, societal development very well:
(quote)
And in that time, as we progressed from communities and neighbourhoods to enclaves and cocooning; and as we progressed from family dinners to TV dinners to pizza pockets; and as we progressed from local businesses and local jobs complete with schools, post offices, hardware stores, and butchers, to busing, regional shopping nodes, and part-time associate positions; and as we progressed from news to infotainment to celebrity gossip and "expert analysis"; and as we progress to energy depletion, water scarcity, and food security passes to corporate control, are things getting better? What is your honest opinion?
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Thu, 2008-08-21 06:02
#50
You have me at a disadvantage, sir. [img]tongue.gif" border="0[/img]
Thu, 2008-08-21 06:12
#51
Those who do not learn from the youth are condemned to be replaced by them.
quote:
Two-thirds of high-school seniors couldn't explain a photo of a theatre whose portal reads 'Coloured Entrance.'
That's because there are very few black-and-white movies now.