It’s a curious condition where people brag about their ignorance. Why wouldn’t you want to read Shakespeare? He’s considered the greatest writer in history. His insight into the human condition is amazing — and he’s poetry is magical.

You suffer from the same problem as Generation Y — shunning culture, knowledge and history — for amusement. How can anyone master any skill without studying the experts and masters of the past — whether it be writing or history or philosophy or economics?

Even your glorious Web 2.0 is building off the advances in software and hardware from the past — constantly reviewing and improving (and understanding) what came before. Otherwise you operate from a vacuum — without context.

The Newsweek piece is filled with flaws as well — missing the main point of the book (have you read it or is that too much of a challenge?). Mark argues that technology is a poor teacher and shows what dozens of studies already prove — reading and writing skills have decreased dramatically in young people.

I just conducted an interview with Mark here where he continues to make some compelling arguments:

http://tinyurl.com/5u98fy

Now go out and buy “Macbeth.” You won’t regret it.

Interesting interview, GFS3. This answer is very similar to a message that Don delivered during his keynote at a recent conference of ours:

The best I can say is for parents every day to require a reading hour for everyone, themselves included. Everybody goes into a room and logs off, disconnects, unplugs. Grab a favorite book or paper or magazine and read for an hour without interruption. Then, go back to the games and chats. It’s not a matter of eliminating digital technology, but a matter of keeping some balance in kids’ lives.

But bad-mouthing Indy?

http://darkpartyreview.blogspot.com/2008/05/is-indiana-jones-misogynist.html

Them’s fighting words.

Hi Mike:
I agree that everyone should read more — its good advice (I’m not sure everyone would take it).

And technically I didn’t bad mouth Indy — I was simply constructing an observation based on the evidence presented in the films. It’s Spielberg who created a women-hater — not me!

Well, I’m not saying that Indy is perfect when it comes to women.

But…he didn’t abuse his position of trust in Raiders when the Archeology coed was clearly hitting on him (with the LOVE YOU on her eyelids). Remember, this was the 1930s: romance with graduate students may well have been considered a perq for college faculty.

The worst thing that Spielberg did in those films with respect to women was casting his wife has the whiniest ingenue ever in Temple of Doom. Poor woman’s career never recovered.

Cheers:

Mike

GFS3,

Methinks thou doth protest too much…!

Wait, did I just quote Shakespeare? (actually, I MISquoted Shakespeare, which I learned when I used Google to find that the correct quote from Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2 is actually “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”)

Look, I realize Mark Bauerlein is going to continue to flog this “dumbest generation” horse to sell books. And I didn’t miss the irony in the fact that my posting a critical observation about the book might in a small way contribute to an expansion of the debate, which leads to more book sales, etc., etc. Every generation in history has bred at least one person who takes it upon him- or herself to record a critique of the upcoming generation regarding how insolent/dumb/lazy/unappreciative it is. We’ve all seen that quote from Socrates about the rotten kids of his day (or was that Plato? Or Aristotle? I don’t know, one of them old Greek dudes…) This too shall pass.

To me, it just comes across as bitter when someone uses inflammatory or unnecessarily provocative words or language to describe another, especially when those descriptions can’t be proven. “Dumbest.” But, hey, it sells books (just as implying that no one under 30 will read a column because “it’s too long” might provoke people into reading the column)(but I do appreciate the video of the pageant contestant at the top; at least I had some eye-candy to entertain me while I was reading the beginning of it).

Sure, we’ve all run into the young cashier who can’t count change unless he/she looks at the register; or heard about the kid who inquired, “Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?”; or despaired over the students who can’t identify the branches of government. But every generation has experienced some degree of that kind of ignorance. It’s not more acute with the Net Generation; in fact, we believe the opposite is true. I’m amazed at how smart and engaged many of the younger people are that I meet: in my company alone we have graduates of the London School of Economics, a Morehead scholarship finalist, authors, and one who just came back from a trip to Sierra Leone, where he had previously worked for two years with the UN. Most are in their 20s. As a boomer, I’m very encouraged by what I see, though I understand this is a small sample of the generation.

As for me and my pal Shakespeare, while I very definitely see the merits in reading and studying his works, I’m no worse the wear for not having read him (though I have to confess, I didn’t escape unscathed – I did have to read The Merchant of Venice in 8th grade; that may have been what convinced me to head home to the comfort of my Mad Magazines). I consider myself sufficiently learned and well-read (ask Dover, I’m no slouch at trivia)(”Face it, judge, you’re a tremendous slouch!” – quick: what movie?). Well, if not learned, at least learned enough. And therein lies the crux of the debate, I think. Am I, or is the Net Generation, “dumb” because we didn’t read what you or Mark Bauerlein want us to read? What did Mark Zuckerberg read? Or Sergei Brin? or Jerry Yang? Did they become successful (and, one would presume, smart) because they (and not others of their generation) read Plutarch? Or does their intelligence come from other sources?

I’m not saying knowing world history or reading Faust or studying the i-Ching isn’t important or helpful — of course it can be. I’m saying that consuming information differently than you or Mark or I have doesn’t make the Net Generation dumb. You don’t measure intelligence by matching different peoples’ knowledge of comparable information.

And now, Farewell! Thou are too dear for my possessing…!

Looks like I am late to this thread, but lemme chime in anyway. First, credibility-establishment — I spent 2 years each in high school studying Macbeth and Julius Caesar. No arguments there. Undoubtedly ol’ Will is in the Top 5 of the World Ironic Canon, whichever perspective you write it from (Harold Bloom-ish Western, Marxist po-mo, Chinese, revisionist African…)

The leap from that observation to the bizarre idea that you must read Shakespeare or anybody else to “How can anyone master any skill without studying the experts and masters of the past — whether it be writing or history or philosophy or economics?” is nothing short of ridiculous.

I am fully open to the idea that a kid with a steady diet of nothing other than the Cartoon network and Twitter one-liners can do great things. The cliched example of culturally isolated creative contribution is of course my co-nationalist, Ramanujan.

The logical mistake you are making is confusing sufficiency for necessity: a rich and textured understanding and appreciation of our global cultural legacy may be sufficient to contribute to it (some doubt there), but it is certainly not necessary.

Your approach to the issue is a more hurried version of Curtis White’s The Middle Mind, and has the same problems.

Learn history and appreciate the past if you enjoy it (I do). Don’t impose it on others as a necessary condition for innovation. It is not.

“Learn history and appreciate the past if you enjoy it (I do). Don’t impose it on others as a necessary condition for innovation. It is not.”

One of the best and simple characterizations of this debate that I’ve seen (and nice adaptation to Santayana’s famous quote about forgetting the past).

I think Bauerlein is brilliant–he knows exactly what to say and how to say it. He has targeted the perfect audience and fed them what they want to hear. Now the educated upwardly mobile mothers across America have more fear to add to their paranoia list: their kids are dumb. “Oh no!”
Little Madison and little Gavin might not be able to outshine the scholarly Chinese foreign-exchange student at their pretentious Connecticut boarding school next semester! Please. Bauerlein is right, we have more available to us than past “generations” (a term I find to be completely erroneous). He is wrong, however, when he claims we aren’t embracing it. What if we’re creating new works of art online. Is YouTube not something so amazing? Myspace, Facebook… they may seem all trivial and wastes of time, but I have a hunch that we may look back at them as brilliant.
He acknowledges that maybe this is all just the older folks getting upset about the young folks, as has happened since Ancient Greece (in those times some thought reading would be our downfall!), and I think he’s right. This is America. We believe with every next step, we should improve, so there is a constant fear we might not. And we love living in fear. Don’t believe me; pick up a newspaper (Bauerlein would be proud!). If global warming and terrorism won’t get us, our children’s stupidity will! As if Mrs. Yuppy-Mother didn’t have enough to fear with vaccinations possibly doing more harm to her children than good and the neighborhood pedophile that could be the seemingly kind Mr. Jenkins next-door, now her “gifted” kids may actually just be sub-par! Bauerlein should do us all a favor and for his next attempt at scaring the shit out of us write about “The Most Paranoid Generation EVER.”
Can’t we all just… relax? I’m 19 and I know where Iraq is and that the Nazi’s were not our allies during World War II. The 18 year old taking my order at Taco Bell last weekend may not know, but the chances of that bringing down this nation are slim. So just relax…
And if I’m wrong, well then you can always say, “I told you so.”