By PAUL GRONDAHL for SAANYS’ Vanguard Magazine
Author Mark Bauerlein sure knows how to pick a fight. Even before you read the first page of his provocative book on the state of learning in America, the Emory University English professor and former director of the Office of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts delivers an upper-cut to the chin of today’s teachers as well as their students with his title: The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future; Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30.
His catchy title aside, the grim prognosis of Bauerlein’s book is this: that a growing obsession of the nation’s youth with texting on their cell phones, downloading dozens of entertaining apps on their iPads, constantly updating their Facebook status, tweeting random 140-character thoughts on their Twitter accounts and uploading silly videos to YouTube of mindless stunts is eroding an already strained American educational system. Given so many shiny, new technological toys that offer unlimited distractions that run counter to the focused, solitary work of reading and writing, Bauerlien concludes: “The intellectual future of the United States looks dim.”
In a pessimistic critique bolstered by numerous studies in which he taps his expertise as a data-cruncher at the NEA, Bauerlein is not anti-technology per se, but he does bemoan a wasted opportunity when it comes to how these potentially powerful learning tools have been used mostly for entertainment.
Not so fast says Tobi Saulnier, president and CEO of 1st Playable Productions in Troy, NY. “I hear the same arguments over social media and video games today that I heard debated generations ago when reading books or comics in class were considered a distraction,” she said. “What we need are teachers and parents to open their minds. They must embrace new styles of learning and realize we can’t do things the way we did them 10 years ago or even 5 years ago. I happen to love reading, I collect books and I get excited by holding books in my hands. Books don’t hold that attraction for my kids, but computers do.”
Full story at www.saanys.org and in the SAANYS’ Vanguard Magazine mailing to members now.
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