Thomas H. Benton has an excellent column in the Chronicle, which deftly combines jokes about dumb college students and reviews of books that are actually sitting on my filing cabinet.
Benton first speaks of the strain of anti-intellectualism in America.
As an English professor, I can attest to the power of that element in
American culture, as can just about anyone in any academic field
without direct, practical applications. When a stranger asks me what I
do, I usually just say, "I’m a teacher." The unfortunate follow-up
remarks — usually about political bias in the classroom and sham
apologies for their poor grammar meant to imply that I am a snob —
usually make me wish I had said, "I sell hydraulic couplers," an answer
more likely to produce hums of respectful incomprehension….For academics on the political left, the last eight years represent the
sleep of reason producing the monsters of our time: suburban
McMansions, gas-guzzling Hummers, pop evangelicalism, the triple-bacon
cheeseburger, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?, creation
science, waterboarding, environmental apocalypse, Miley Cyrus, and the
Iraq War — all presided over by that twice-elected, self-satisfied,
inarticulate avatar of American incuriosity and hubris: he who shall
not be named.
Several recent writers and academics have discussed how the Internet is making us dumber. There’s the Susan Jacoby book
Benton says that student’s skills have plummeted in recent years and the generational gap between faculty and students is cavernous. The computer can be blamed, but there are other causes, too.
Fantastic article.
Apt. 11d 
I don’t understand the generational gap: I’m 47 and I spend about 20 hours on the Internet a week. I’ve met good friends and a couple of boyfriends on the Internet, I read the NYT every day on the Internet…why are academics so distanced from it? Being on the Internet doesn’t have to mean abandoning all grammar and writing style; I hope I’m influencing people to use standard English rather than L33T speak.
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Kai,
My explanation is that there are lots of different internets. It always surprises me (even when it shouldn’t) when I wander into an unknown digital neighborhood, and discover that it has completely different assumptions and culture. I’m fairly circumspect in unfamiliar parts of the internet, but on any given day, I’m likely to see some less careful visitor getting mugged by the regulars (for instance by the housing bears at thehousingbubbleblog.com or by infertiles at alittlepregnant.com). That reality has the effect of making sure that people prefer the security and familiarity of the beaten path.
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“For academics on the political left, the last eight years represent the sleep of reason producing the monsters of our time: suburban McMansions, gas-guzzling Hummers, pop evangelicalism, the triple-bacon cheeseburger, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?, creation science, waterboarding, environmental apocalypse, Miley Cyrus, and the Iraq War — all presided over by that twice-elected, self-satisfied, inarticulate avatar of American incuriosity and hubris: he who shall not be named.”
I’d extend the list a bit: frugality chic, Dave Ramsey, green chic, cowpooling, fresh basil, iced mochas, Veggie Tales, globetrotting mission trips for teens (one of my young InterVarsity-affiliated cousins has been to practically more 3rd world hell holes than I can even name), Chipotle, Paneras, Pixar, Meet the Robinsons, Potter-mania, Smartcars, ipods, iphones, Treos, wireless internet, blogs, the rotovirus vaccine, flu shots, happy pills, better understanding of mental health issues, less invasive surgeries, Lipitor, a shift from 70s nostalgia to 80s nostalgia, the end of beige hegemony in home decorating, spray-on sunblock, compact double strollers with air-filled tires, The Office, podcasts, Project Gutenberg, free shipping from amazon.com, Librivox, Netflix, greatschools.net, trulia.com, etc. (I realize that some of this stuff dates back earlier than 2001.)
Everybody’s list of good stuff from the past 8 years is going to be different, but my point is that it’s churlish to pick out a handful of minor pet peeves and declare them the characteristic features of our age, when so many very good things have been happening.
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I find it interesting that you don’t mention Benton’s “however”:
On the other hand, I am not so pessimistic about the abilities of the “digital natives.” Different generations have different ways of knowing — different configurations of multiple intelligences. Pick your era and your subject: How many of us know anything about farming anymore or how to read the changing of the seasons? How many of us know how to repair an automobile or make a cake from scratch?
Of course, we lament that the skills we have acquired at great pains can become lost to the next generation, but we can hardly reverse all of it. And it may be that the young are better adapted to what is coming than we are.
I don’t disagree about American anti-intellectualism, but elders have been criticizing what their juniors lack for, well, forever. It’s not that the anti-intellectualism doesn’t influence students, but I think the two kinds of complaints need to be distinguished. (I’d love to see discussion of how student demographics have changed along with the “decline” in student skills that Bauerlein documents, for instance. Maybe he does that, I don’t know.)
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New Kid -heh. Funny. In my head, I had written out the “however”, but rereading the post, I guess that paragraph remained in my head. Probably left it out, because I’m still thinking about it. This discussion dovetails nicely with the previous one. Jen and others in the comment section had questioned the traditional education package that kids get. Maybe the traditional education package with grammar and transition sentences is the new farming.
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Laura, maybe it’s *because* reading is not the primary form of obtaining information that grammar and transition sentences have to be taught.
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you know ive been reading this blog for awhile, and the more i read it, the more slanted i find that it is. try some rigorous thought?
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Que?
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Hola. Me llamo MH. Ahora este blog es bilinqual? Cómo usted mueve de un tirón un signo de interrogación en una caja del comentario?
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Sorry! I don’t know Spanish, and don’t know how to do the punctuation correctly on my keyboard, but I hope this is more satisfactory.
[Upside-down question mark]Que?
It’s such a sensible bit of punctuation–you need to know that you are dealing with a question at the beginning of the sentence, not just the end.
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Doesn’t complaining about “Kids these days!” date back to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians? They drive their chariots too fast and don’t show respect to their elders. Socrates (or one of his colleagues) had a Kids These Days rant, for Pete’s sake. I swear, one day a cave drawing will be decoded to read, “Kids these days don’t know the proper way to hunt mammoth. Ah, for the good old days…”
My point being that if there really IS a decline in the abilities of “kids these days,” so much wolf has been cried that my automatic reaction is to roll my eyes.
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