Comments on: The Dumbest Generation?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 10 May 2008 01:29:32 +0000

Amanda Roberts, I believe your opinion is a bit dangerous. When you say why not let dates go, just look it up, next you’ll be saying let math go, we’ll use a calculator or let english go, we’ll search the internet, let science go, we’ll search the internet again, or maybe why not everything except basic computer surfing go since we can just look it up on our computer.

By: Title - important or not?

Title - important or not? — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:18:31 +0000

[...] post written by Ms. Roberts called “The Dumbest Generation“. The title itself is so controversial that it started getting attention when she submitted [...]

By: Travis

Travis — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:25:03 +0000

I’ve heard it said that a person isnt born stupid. It takes an education to do that.

By: Jeff Ingraham

Jeff Ingraham — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 14:17:08 +0000

Speaking as both a teacher and one of the dreaded “over 30″ crowd, I will offer that this generation has been damaged by the previous two. I see this generation of parents as the worst that there has ever been, but even that is misleading.

In the past fifty years the government has stepped further and further into the education system. If you went back and looked at how things used to be done, education was a local community issue. Schools used to be part of a community’s center, and everyone had a voice. That voice has been almost completely stripped away by a government that has regulated the schools to death. Gone are the days when students were drilled with fundamentals and taught toward becoming a person rather than a test-taking machine.

Big government + parents shoved aside = a big mess.

Yes, this is the dumbest generation, but it isn’t the fault of the kids- they’re the victims.

By: brio

brio — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 10:38:18 +0000

All one has to be is an editor to see that literacy has gone the way of the dinosaur on the Internet, particularly among young users, “this generation.” Without consistent spelling, grammar, word usage and other areas of language, the greatest communication invention ever is becoming a mass of often meaningless writing that will one day become overall unintelligible because everyone will write as s/he pleases, which the next person cannot hope to understand. Those who rely on: “Typos!” are in denial.

By: Travis

Travis — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 10:08:04 +0000

I think it is remarkably ignorant to make blanket statements about a group of people. It’d be like me saying “all old people pee their pants.” Some do I’m sure, but not all. Statements like “this is what is wrong with x” and “why is y so stupid?” Serve only to underscore the real issue: that some people do not take care of themselves and their families first. Tell you what Mr Graham: if you can first solve every problem in your and your family’s life, then you can tell me how stupid I am and hey, I might even listen. Until then, mind your own business.

By: Evilagram

Evilagram — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 07:17:00 +0000

I disagree.

What we are seeing in recent generations is a discrepancy.

We’re getting a few smarter children, and a lot more stupid ones.

The real trouble today is how we are raising our kids. We are handing things to them on a silver platter, when we should leave the platter atop the refrigerator for them to get themselves. There are of course, other problems pertaining to this too, but I think that this is one of the largest ones.

By: Joe

Joe — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 06:23:34 +0000

There is a disconnect between literal knowledge such as facts, history, etc and abstract, complex theory ranging from differential calculus to decision theory. While you maybe able to use the internet to look up a quick fact or history on a topic, you can’t be so quick to understand complex theories or abstract ideas. One example is in statistical courses. Students believe Excel and the internet will save them. While they can run a statistical test in Excel, they do not understand what it is derived from and how violations of assumptions can make the result uninterpretable. This leads to Type I and Type II errors.

Another significant issue is the accuracy of the information they find online. Without any baseline knowledge of a topic, how would they have any clue of what they are reading is accurate? Many times, online sources are riddled with errors or are so biased they cannot provide an objective point of view. In most instances, the information lack peer review. Before someone brings up the “peer review” from Wikipedia, pleaes keep in mind I am talking about expert peer review. Having 200 people “review” an article on Wikipedia does not ensure the accuracy of the article if the majority of those reviewers lack anything more than cursory knowledge of a topic. I am not saying Wikipedia is not valuable…far from it actually. I am saying though that information found online should be verified via a secondary resource.

I am not going to comment on whether the current generation of students is smarter or dumber than past generations because that is too subjective on what is valued as intelligence. I will say though that many members of the current generation don’t put forth much effort because they seem to think it should be provided for them. I expect this behavior from my Jack Russell Terrier, not an adult human.

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:41:01 +0000

Wow, what a thread…I notice that that has not been much analytical reasoning to justify the responses supporting that kids today are more stupid than previous generations.
The individuals claiming that their generation, and by extension themselves, are smarter than the preceding generations, have failed to hold themselves to the same standard of comparison to other previous generations.
Today, in the western world, it would be a safe assumption to claim that more than half of the population is engaged in some level of white-collar work. At the turn of about the tenth century, individuals in white-collar jobs such as trade, nobility, and the wealthy spoke multiple languages, had significant understanding of the sciences of the day, and could sing, dance, draw, and paint all with equal skill. In fact, if anyone would examine the white-collar educational practices of that era, it was expected that ALL information, including books, be memorized. I would challenge the majority of the individuals today to claim the same intellectual veracity of that time.
Now, let’s fast forward to the 19th century. When I was a child, back in the 70’s, one of my teachers brought in a standardized test from the late 19th century. I remember looking at the test and trying to answer questions about crop yield and animal husbandry. There were also questions about weights and measurements that society has used since at least 1930. Both my Uncle (an industrial engineer) and my Grandfather (an amateur scientist and railroad engineer) could not answer the questions. However, they could both spout dates and facts until they were blue in the face. They were both bright individuals and considered by their peers to be very intelligent. However, they could only speak a spattering of Latin, knew nothing of the sciences except where it influenced their work, and only my Grandfather could do any type of artistic work. Compared to the scientists, business people, and nobles of the middle ages, my relatives would have been considered stupid. However, to their peers, they were brilliant and talented.
I was not introduced to computers until I was well into college. In other words, I am a digital immigrant. I can spout significant dates in US history, but I can also apply theory. I may not be able to spout all of the facts and figures that my Grandfather and Uncle could, but with the use of a PC, I have the data readily available. Furthermore, I do more analytical work of a higher caliber in one week than they could do in half a year. This is not because I am better or more intelligent than they are, but because the demands of my society today require it.
I would argue that the Boomer generation is applying their own standards of what they think education is or should be without understanding that the demands of business and of society have changed. They appear to forget that, to their generational predecessors, they would also be considered ignorant and “stupid”. I accept that there are stupid people everywhere. I agree with one of the posts on this site that implied that all you have to do is walk out the door to find many idiots. However, there are also many smart, young people today. I would venture to say that there are more smart young people around today than most think there are.
Let’s not forget that the role of education is to prepare young people to be productive members of the future society that they will belong to. It is not the role of education to prepare people to live in the past. If young people are to succeed, they must be technologically savvy. In my business, I require people to adjust as information becomes available. Any newcomer into my industry must be able to process vast amounts of information in a matter of hours, not days or months. This is doubly hard when the information can change without notice. As a result, I would not be able hire people like my Grandfather or Uncle because they would not be able to adjust to the changes in and volumes of information that we process.
My response implies that people older than the kids today will become obsolete, and that is true. It is not our world, but theirs. Our time is passing and the best thing that we can do for our children is to teach them to understand our past yet embrace the future.
I would encourage people not to look at the younger generations and compare them to ourselves, but to look at them and praise and encourage them because they go where we cannot, the future.

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:19:52 +0000

We can refute Graham’s claims all we want but I doubt he’ll listen to them because his definition of intelligence is so skewed, so let us try accepting his premises as true and draw a new conclusion.

Say we *are* the dumbest generation. That implies that their generation was smarter than we are and the generation before that. Well, the knowledge he speaks of is not manifested by deep thinking or personal reflection; it is taught! If the generation before us is not the dumbest generation then they had better teachers than the ones we have. This way of thinking draws simply one conclusion: the generation before us are the worst teachers. From this we can also propose that perhaps *they* are the dumbest generation, incapable of passing along their knowledge to future generations.

A wonderful parry followed by a coup de grace riposte! I believe his book is dead…