Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Jun 16, 2009

Shelley rated it:

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who plays a role in the education of teens - parents, teachers, administrators, pastors, etc - as well as anyone concerned about the intellectual well-being of our country.

His premise is simple but chilling. Bauerlein argues that on a daily basis "The Dumbest Generation" willfully abandons the kinds of intellectual pursuits that typically transform immature youths into responsible, sophisticated citizens, exchanging them for t More...

4 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 13, 2011

Bradley rated it:

I really enjoyed this book, and it provided some proof of what I have been experiencing as a teacher at a university. Students - even at a university - are reluctant to read any more than they must, don't take an interest in the material, and don't take an interest in the world around them. As a university professor, Bauerlain has experienced all these things himself, and now has the research to back it up.

As Bauerlain states, younger people (and I'm one of the under-30s; just bare More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 11, 2008

Craig rated it:

The Dumbest Generation's premise is that today's kids are sorely equipped to handle the challenges of the lives they have ahead of them. The primary reason behind this, Bauerlain states, is that this upcoming generation (broadly people under 30 but more specifically people in high school) spend an ever decreasing amount of time reading. This rationale should come as no surprise when you consider that the author is an English professor. The author sees this decline first-hand in the classroom More...

7 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 05, 2008

Danielle rated it:

This book was full of generalizations and sloppy assumptions. Bauerlain better hope this generation is dumb so that they actually buy what he's saying. He spends the beginning of the book spouting results from all kinds of surveys and studies indicating how poorly educated the Millenial generation is, which I don't doubt. However my issue is that he doesn't compare the results to any other generation. Seeing as how I recently read an article indicating that 44% of our elected officials could More...

0 comments like (13 people liked it)

Dec 13, 2008

Nathan rated it:

Baulerlein has the statistics, but what he lacks is nuance, tact, and ultimately, objectivity. Under his steely eye, anyone under 30 is magicked into a mouthbreathing, illiterate cross between Britney Spears and Dennis the Menace. The shrillness of his rhetoric borders on ageism, sure to offend anyone under 30 who doesn't get all their information from Wikipedia or base their value on the worth of their iPod.

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Dec 20, 2011

Diana rated it:

Interesting read. I thought it funny how the book spent a great deal of time talking about how people aren't reading (especially the younger generation) and yet the author chose to write a book and...I was reading it! At times in the beginning I felt like I was reading the same information over and over and thinking I had just read this page as it was a lot like the page before and the page before. It got a bit long and dry at times. I found sentences to be very long at times and hard to fol More...

0 comments like

Dec 06, 2011

Shannon rated it:

Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future* (*Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30), is a sobering critique not of the values or behaviors of Americans under 30, but of the younger generation’s intellect. Supporting his argument with anecdotal instances and statistical studies, he contends that America’s youth is surrounded by an abundance of knowledge and chooses, instead, to turn inward. Bauerlein quickly (and accurately) turns More...

0 comments like

Jul 19, 2011

Stewart rated it:

Mark Bauerlein's premise that the electronic world (Internet, Facebook, cellphones, iPads, etc.) is dumbing-down and disengaging younger people from the wider world is hard to dispute. "Most young Americans possess little of the knowledge that makes for an informed citizen, and too few of them master the skills needed to negotiate an information-heavy, communication-based society and economy." I have read the surveys and polls over the past three decades, some of which are quoted in More...

1 comment like

Jun 02, 2011

Kari rated it:

Bauerlein shares research from studies across generations, sometimes going back to the 1970s to make comparisons. While he finds that intelligence seems to be getting higher (more geniuses), general knowledge and interest in history, culutre and politics is declining. The current generation of 18-30 year olds is more concerned about their social circle and pop culture than about who is running for governor, which doesn't bode well for the next generation of leadership.
Bauerlein was one of More...

0 comments like

Apr 10, 2011

Chikuns rated it:

There is a slight irony to posting a review of this book on a social networking website (albeit one that focuses solely on literature). While Bauerlein's thesis is solid and most of his contentions are true in some cases, the book offers hardly any solid solutions, and instead comes off as an ivory tower polemic that solidifies one of the author's fears: that those who love literature and believe in its virtues are seen as stodgy fogies unwilling to embrace the digital age. Yes, teenagers util More...

0 comments like

Mar 29, 2011

Jud rated it:

The author visited my library last night and for the most part delivered the main messages from this book:

1. 24/7 digital connectivity (a.k.a. social networking, Internet 2.0) tends to exacerbate the peer-pressured, anti-intellectual predispositions of American youth. It didn't cause it, but it makes it worse.

2. Facility with technology is not the same thing as intelligence.

3. Reading books and reading online aren't the same. Reading books both encourages and More...

0 comments like

Jul 19, 2010

Derek rated it:

The thrust of the argument behind Mark Bauerlein’s excellent The Dumbest Generation is that the decline of American intellectualism has largely been influenced by the proliferation of technology, both in the classroom and in social settings, and that the main culprits behind the decline are the “Millenials” (my generation) and younger. It’s a well-argued and very well-supported premise throughout, and simply based on the limitations of a “review” such as this, much of the nuance and intelligence More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 05, 2010

Panida rated it:

I've decided to shelve this book. Although I believe that the younger generation is letting the thirst knowledge and culture slip away into superficial pastimes, I feel that as you get older the world around you changes. There may be hope for the world yet, as the "Dumbest Generation" grows up.

As for the book, well, it was a little too heavily laden with research on study habits, test taking skills, and a generalized way of proving the decline of intelligence in the curre More...

1 comment like

May 11, 2011

Jacqueline rated it:

Anyone who can legitimately make the assertion that the youth of the twenty-first century are not generally, deeply flawed needs to lay down the crack pipe. Specifically, the quantitative intelligence of the tweens and teens this generation has produced is abysmal to say the least, slit-wrist worthy to say the most.

This shrinking intelligence threshold is not a question, it is a fact.

And this fact is not only expounded upon in The Dumbest Generation, it is also reinforce More...

0 comments like

Jul 14, 2010

Michelle rated it:

Well. I'm certainly impressed by the evidence marshaled in this book, especially when coupled with the recent release of a study showing that low-income students who received laptops for schoolwork in a recent program actually had their educational scores go DOWN. Well, Bauerlein wouldn't be surprised--turns out the kids used them to play games, not do schoolwork.
The first part of this book goes over the unfortunately all-too-ample research showing that our kids these days don't really k More...

0 comments like

Feb 15, 2012

Amber rated it:

I'm three pages away so I'm going to go ahead and mark this as finished.

I found this book really patronizing and annoying. Sure, he has some good points about education, etc but he is definitely coming from a white middle-class male view. He even referred to culture warriors exclusively as males. Bauerlein is a traditionalist to a fault, and seems to have an English professor chip on his shoulder. This is especially evident in the chapter about bibliophobes.

The strangest thin More...

0 comments like

Apr 24, 2009

Saffy rated it:

Okay, so...

I feel horribly insulted.

I mean, seriously. Are you saying that ALL young people today are dumb? That's pretentious and arrogant. Excuse me, but I don't spend all my time on social networking- in fact, very few hours indeed. And when I do, it's to talk to people who have similar interests, and who post in a very dignified, informational way.

HUGE eye-roll at the no-reading section. I'm 13 years old, and I've read more than 50 books this year, and More...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Feb 18, 2012

Derrick rated it:

I decided to read this book because I saw a friend, who is under 30, reading this book last summer. The author has a powerful thesis, but fails to execute well. At the beginning, he starts with an example of Walt Whitman High School, an exception to his thesis. He then provides several (SEVERAL!) examples of research that supports his view of a generation immersed in their own social cocoon. I was supportive of his ideas after a page or two, but he proceeded to share superfluous items of researc More...

0 comments like

Jul 27, 2011

Kash rated it:

This is so very frightening. This slim book talks about the digital generation born between 1980 to mid 1990s. A generation that reads less and less every day and is off the mark by miles. And this know-nothing generation voted a know-nothing president into office this past November. It makes me very worried. Unless something is done with the public education, there's no way the future generations become any better either. Most teenagers and young adults I have talked to in the US or Canada are More...

0 comments like

Sep 18, 2009

Mary rated it:

This book really looked so promising when I read a section while waiting at the local bookstore. And there is some great insight and data here, but this is not the book it should be. There are a lot of statistics, which is good, but the author does not do a great job explaining the data. The writing is very dry (I was falling asleep every 2 pages in the second half). Sometimes the author presented the data about the brilliance of the current up-and-coming generation and I would get confused abou More...

0 comments like

Sep 27, 2011

Scot rated it:

This author made me angry. He cited lots and lots of statistics, which can always be interpreted differently by anyone for any reason. While I would agree with a fair number of the generalized observations in this book, the author comes off sounding like one of those old fogeys who believes the young generation are worthless. The "explicit warning" to not trust anyone under 30 on the front cover should have been a tip-off.

I feel like the few hours I spent reading this book More...

0 comments like

Jul 29, 2009

Amy rated it:

This book was a particularly pertinent read for me since I find myself on both sides of Bauerlein's audience. Being under 30, I am as the title suggests, "not to be trusted" but as a teacher of today's youth, I see the repercussions of our society on education and am almost as frustrated as Bauerlein. (I truly believe no one could be MORE frustrated than Bauerlein; which may be a turn-off to some readers, but I find it refreshing in light of how our districts and administration tell More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 02, 2011

Jon added it

When Albert Szent-Gyorgi (the scientist best known for discovering Vitamin C) was asked, circa 1970, what advice he'd give young people he said "I would share their rejection of the world as it is, all of it. What good is study and work? Fornication, at least that is something good. Fornicate and take drugs against this terrible strain of idiots who run the world." Unfortunately youngsters failed to follow his advice, instead choosing computers, with the horrifying results described in More...

0 comments like

Oct 27, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

I agreed with the author's premise that the under 30 generation values reading less than the screen time they spend with computers and phones. He also makes a clear case that reading gives people a sense of history and knowledge that is necessary for a democarcy to exist. One fact I found interesting was that most people read a computer page of print in an F shape reading the first line, then skimming, then reading a middle line and scanning to the end. He makes a good case that indepth analyisi More...

1 comment like

Sep 09, 2011

farmwifetwo rated it:

I'm one of the first - having to employ the "less than 30's" and btwn living rural and knowing our neighbors and a big "clan - that their "I'm owed" attitude leaves a lot to be desired.

But this book is no more than a rant. His premise isn't the lack of education, the lack of ability to read or do math, the lack of students coming out of school with employable skills... nope... he's annoyed they don't enjoy history nor civics nor remember it. His second rant i More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 25, 2011

Sara rated it:

Sure, the title is sensationalist. Sensationalism sells. I'm sure some the stats were tweaked a little to fit the author's needs, but that doesn't hide the fact that kids do indeed spend too much time doing frivolous things on the computer. I dog-eared 20+ pages of this book. It seemed the author said something powerful every other page.

I teach high school and yes, there are still kids out there that read. In fact, just last week a student of mine said she was going to start reading More...

0 comments like

Jul 07, 2009

Jodi added it

As P. Gregory said, the younger generation is devoting too much energy to 'time wasting' activities. This wasn't a book to use scare tactics, but it certainly gave food for thought. I'm at the age where I can see what is happening as young people are not differentiating proper boundaries of behavior --what is acceptable as public knowledge and of import verses what is being thrown to a wider audience. My last few years of teaching history kids main argument for a point was "That is what More...

1 comment like

Jan 13, 2011

Monta rated it:

This was an interesting read. One of the things I liked about it is that it focused on classics, civics and history--all of which seem to be getting left behind in our schools today as we focus on science and math. Of course I'm a civics, history, reading fan! The general theme is that with all the technology available today, kids are focusing on the social aspects (think facebook!). They spend so much time interacting with themselves that they are losing the mentoring aspects of interacting More...

0 comments like

Nov 14, 2009

Hillery rated it:

Good book on how all the technology today has helped young people stay focused on their own insular worlds, where texting each other and constant contact has taken them even further than previous generations from intellectual pursuits. The first chapter or two quoted a few too many studies and statistics (that's what appendices are for), but it is a worthwhile read nonetheless. He argues that adults are in large part to blame by not fighting hard enough against 'youth ignorance and apathy' and More...

0 comments like

Feb 11, 2011

Connie rated it:

I would give this book close to 5 stars for importance of subject and also imparting some very compelling and vital information, but 2 stars for the way it was written and presented. A very frustrating read!

The Good Stuff: It presents persuasive information about how the easy availability of information ends up isolating young users of the internet, because although there are endless websites with a treasure trove of enlightening and educational information - news, art, politics, e More...

3 comments like

reviews