Dumb, Dumber and Smarter

Now hold on a tick here! I haven't read Mark Bauerlein's 2009 book The Dumbest Generation, which appears to be built on the claim that people under 30 have been stupefied by the digital age, but already I don't like it's brash title. I came across the title when viewing a PBS documentary Digital Nation: Life on the Digital Frontier. Viewing a clip from the documentary was one of this week's assignments in a course I am taking, Digital Writing in the Classroom.

You have to be careful about labeling generations. Tom Brokaw went the brash-titled route as well with The Greatest Generation, people born in the 1920's  and I can think of more than a few moral shortfalls that bunch had! 

The under-30 set are some of the kindest, conscientious, technologically literate people who are socially, environmentally, and fiscally responsible to boot. As I have just turned 50 this summer, I have come to realize I will depend on these people when I start to wear Depends, so never would I put them down. I wonder if Bauerlein thought of that?

In any event, the real argument seems to be, are they dumber than older folks because their brains have been altered and their attention spans shortened due to their immersion in digital technology? The studies presented in the PBS video give evidence that students are now reading fewer books and writing with less stamina, in "burst and snippets." But "Dumb" lies in the eyes of the beholder. It depends what you're looking for. The target definition of "smart" is changing -- and it's changing rapidly. 

Students coming into my classroom as young adolescents have most definitely changed over the last dozen years.  I have seen that tendency to write in snippets and to be daunted by lengthy texts. More and more I need to work on drawing them into the traditional culture of reading and writing by teaching and especially modeling it directly and then providing the time during class to practice it. Without the time to practice within the classroom and without explicitly making my own contemplative processes as a reader and writer transparent to them, their skills would lag. 

Yet, my students have also changed in new and exciting ways as they work with digital literacies more and more in their lives and for academic purposes. They come in now with a well-developed eye for visual composition, in photos that they take as well as layout and graphic design. They are able to outpace me in producing iMovie and using Garage Band. It seems like once I get them started, they take off and find something new that I did not think about or even know about! And with minimal instruction about task and parameters, students have a great deal of enthusiasm and stamina when I ask them to interact digitally within their book clubs and invent new ways within digital formats to share information and authentic reflections with one another as they read.

So I am not willing to label the younger generation dumb and am keeping an open mind on new ways they can show me smart.