Do you believe the children are our future?
Check out The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlin, and the corresponding writeup in the Los Angeles TImes:
Increasingly disconnected from the “adult” world of tradition, culture, history, context and the ability to sit down for more than five minutes with a book, today’s digital generation is becoming insulated in its own stultifying cocoon of bad spelling, civic illiteracy and endless postings that hopelessly confuse triviality with transcendence. Two-thirds of U.S. undergraduates now score above average on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, up 30% since 1982.
Sure. Maybe Bauerlin is simply grumpy, but who knows…
Maybe he’s right.
July 9th, 2008 at 4:09 am
Ugh, I hate books and articles like this. Don’t these people know that every generation says the same exact thing about the generation that comes after it? So how about we all just agree not to say it anymore and all get along?
Besides, our generation is pretty genius.
July 10th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I would have to agree that that one military officer that said today’s ‘millenials’ are a bunch of “narcissistic praise junkies”. The ones I’ve had to deal with online and professionally are unable to handle criticism of any kind, tend to crumble under pressure, and can’t put a sentence together to save their lives.
However, these kids aren’t stupid or illiterate. They’re well read, know what’s going on in the world, and have more grounding in opinions of global events than I ever did at that age.
Still, it’s often like handling a baby with a decent IQ, always worried they’re about to start crying.
Perfect example: I told someone they were wrong on their facts. I was yelled back at and said “You can’t tell me I’m wrong - that’s my opinion!” And I was like, “Your opinion is wrong and here are the facts.” “I don’t care what the facts are - you don’t have permission to tell me I’m wrong!” Christ, shove them all in a box and send them to moon and tell Mother Nature that she can have the planet back, ’cause as a species we’re fucking doomed.
Still, for the most part, they get the job done and there’s just a lot of cultural differences that happen between any generation. I am still struggling to get caught up with the whole lolwtfbbq generation, which is odd cause I was there when the internet started taking off and was around when lol started, but now it’s morphe into it’s whole sub-language that I find myself having to look up words in the urban dictionary at least twice a week.