The Dumbest Generation

The Dumbest Generation PDF Author: Mark Bauerlein
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781585426393
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Knowledge defecits -- The new bibliophobes -- Screen time -- Online learning and non-learning -- The betrayal of the mentors -- No more culture warriors

The Dumbest Generation

The Dumbest Generation PDF Author: Mark Bauerlein
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440636893
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This shocking, surprisingly entertaining romp into the intellectual nether regions of today's underthirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a society of know-nothings. The Dumbest Generation is a dire report on the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its impact on American democracy and culture. For decades, concern has been brewing about the dumbed-down popular culture available to young people and the impact it has on their futures. But at the dawn of the digital age, many thought they saw an answer: the internet, email, blogs, and interactive and hyper-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children. The terms “information superhighway” and “knowledge economy” entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their knowledge and understanding of technology to set themselves apart as the vanguards of this new digital era. That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen. The technology that was supposed to make young adults more aware, diversify their tastes, and improve their verbal skills has had the opposite effect. According to recent reports from the National Endowment for the Arts, most young people in the United States do not read literature, visit museums, or vote. They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount basic American history, name their local political representatives, or locate Iraq or Israel on a map. The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future is a startling examination of the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its impact on American culture and democracy. Over the last few decades, how we view adolescence itself has changed, growing from a pitstop on the road to adulthood to its own space in society, wholly separate from adult life. This change in adolescent culture has gone hand in hand with an insidious infantilization of our culture at large; as adolescents continue to disengage from the adult world, they have built their own, acquiring more spending money, steering classrooms and culture towards their own needs and interests, and now using the technology once promoted as the greatest hope for their futures to indulge in diversions, from MySpace to multiplayer video games, 24/7. Can a nation continue to enjoy political and economic predominance if its citizens refuse to grow up? Drawing upon exhaustive research, personal anecdotes, and historical and social analysis, The Dumbest Generation presents a portrait of the young American mind at this critical juncture, and lays out a compelling vision of how we might address its deficiencies. The Dumbest Generation pulls no punches as it reveals the true cost of the digital age—and our last chance to fix it.

The Dumbest Generation Grows Up

The Dumbest Generation Grows Up PDF Author: Mark Bauerlein
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684512212
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
From Stupefied Youth to Dangerous Adults Back in 2008, Mark Bauerlein was a voice crying in the wilderness. As experts greeted the new generation of “Digital Natives” with extravagant hopes for their high-tech future, he pegged them as the “Dumbest Generation.” Today, their future doesn’t look so bright, and their present is pretty grim. The twenty-somethings who spent their childhoods staring into a screen are lonely and purposeless, unfulfilled at work and at home. Many of them are even suicidal. The Dumbest Generation Grows Up is an urgently needed update on the Millennials, explaining their not-so-quiet desperation and, more important, the threat that their ignorance poses to the rest of us. Lacking skills, knowledge, religion, and a cultural frame of reference, Millennials are anxiously looking for something to fill the void. Their mentors have failed them. Unfortunately, they have turned to politics to plug the hole in their souls. Knowing nothing about history, they are convinced that it is merely a catalogue of oppression, inequality, and hatred. Why, they wonder, has the human race not ended all this injustice before now? And from the depths of their ignorance rises the answer: Because they are the first ones to care! All that is needed is to tear down our inherited civilization and replace it with their utopian aspirations. For a generation unacquainted with the constraints of human nature, anything seems possible. Having diagnosed the malady before most people realized the patient was sick, Mark Bauerlein surveys the psychological and social wreckage and warns that we cannot afford to do this to another generation.

Fast Future

Fast Future PDF Author: David D. Burstein
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807044709
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
A millennial examines how his generation is profoundly impacting politics, business, media, and activism They’ve been called trophy kids, entitled, narcissistic, the worst employees in history, and even the dumbest generation. But, argues David Burstein, the millennial generation’s unique blend of civic idealism and savvy pragmatism will enable us to overcome a deeply divided nation facing economic and environmental calamities. With eighty-million millennials (people who are today eighteen to thirty years old) coming of age and emerging as leaders, this is the largest generation in U.S. history, and, by 2020, its members will represent one out of every three adults. They are more ethnically and racially diverse than their elders and have begun their careers at a time when the recession has set back the job market. Yet they remain optimistic about their future and are deeply connected to one another. Drawing on extensive interviews with his millennial peers and compelling new research, Burstein illustrates how his generation is simultaneously shaping and being shaped by a fast-paced and fast-changing world. Part oral history, part social documentary, Fast Future reveals the impact and story of the millennial generation—in its own words.

Literary Criticism

Literary Criticism PDF Author: Mark Bauerlein
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812203879
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
As the study of literature has extended to cultural contexts, critics have developed a language all their own. Yet, argues Mark Bauerlein, scholars of literature today are so unskilled in pertinent sociohistorical methods that they compensate by adopting cliches and catchphrases that serve as substitutes for information and logic. Thus by labeling a set of ideas an "ideology" they avoid specifying those ideas, or by saying that someone "essentializes" a concept they convey the air of decisive refutation. As long as a paper is generously sprinkled with the right words, clarification is deemed superfluous. Bauerlein contends that such usages only serve to signal political commitments, prove membership in subgroups, or appeal to editors and tenure committees, and that current textual practices are inadequate to the study of culture and politics they presume to undertake. His book discusses 23 commonly encountered terms—from "deconstruction" and "gender" to "problematize" and "rethink"—and offers a diagnosis of contemporary criticism through their analysis. He examines the motives behind their usage and the circumstances under which they arose and tells why they continue to flourish. A self-styled "handbook of counterdisciplinary usage," Literary Criticism: An Autopsy shows how the use of illogical, unsound, or inconsistent terms has brought about a breakdown in disciplinary focus. It is an insightful and entertaining work that challenges scholars to reconsider their choice of words—and to eliminate many from critical inquiry altogether.

Generation IY

Generation IY PDF Author: Tim Elmore
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578063553
Category : Christian life
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The one book every parent, teacher, coach, and youth pastor should read. This landmark book paints a compelling-and sobering-picture of what could happen to our society if we don't change the way we relate to today's teens and young adults. Researched-based and solution-biased, it moves beyond sounding an alarm to outlining practical strategies to: * Guide "stuck" adolescents and at-risk boys to productive adulthood * Correct crippling parenting styles * Repair damage from (unintentional) lies we've told kids * Guide them toward real success instead of superficial "self-esteem" * Adopt education strategies that engage (instead of bore) an "i" generation * Pull youth out of their "digital" ghetto into the real world * Employ their strengths and work with their weaknesses on the job * Defuse a worldwide demographic time bomb * Equip Generation iY to lead us into the future

The Dumbest Things Ever Said

The Dumbest Things Ever Said PDF Author: Steven Price
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493029436
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
A collection of stupid utterances, mostly unintentional--although not always--from politics, show business, sports, and anywhere else people can put their feet in their mouths. Based on recorded history, it's safe to say that dumb remarks have been with us since the invention of writing. Young or old, rich or poor, famous or unknown, people of all generations and cultures have seized the opportunity to say something dumb - stupidity has always been an equal opportunity employer. In celebration of such mental lapses and pure idiocy, here is a collection of stupid utterances, unintentional and otherwise, from the worlds of politics, radio, television, newspapers, show business, sports, and literature - and everywhere else people can - and have - put their feet in their mouths.

The Dumbest Generation

The Dumbest Generation PDF Author: Mark Bauerlein
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781585426393
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Knowledge defecits -- The new bibliophobes -- Screen time -- Online learning and non-learning -- The betrayal of the mentors -- No more culture warriors

GENERATION ECCH

GENERATION ECCH PDF Author: Jason Cohen
Publisher: Touchstone
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Haunted by the spectre of the Beats and the Boomers, the Hippies and the Punks, today's twentysomethings are desperate for anything that gives them a generational self-image. This waggishly ironic book takes a riotous jab at the Generation X/twentysomething phenomenon and examines various aspects of their pop culture, including music, literature, and politics.

Dumb Politics

Dumb Politics PDF Author: Tanner T. Roberts
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781948035248
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Moral arguments have taken the place of empirical evidence. Virtue signaling has replaced constructive political discussion. Individualism is dead and efforts of those that govern are measured more meticulously than the efforts of those who are governed. All of the rhetoric taking place in the political climate today is generationally backed for years to come. What is this rhetoric? It is simply Dumb Politics.Broken ideas and assimilation of thought have rooted itself in education, economics, culture, immigration, and political name calling. Dumb Politics will teach us that you must never underestimate the ignorance of the masses.

The Dumbest Generation

The Dumbest Generation PDF Author: Michael Graham
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN: 0759524513
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 17

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Book Description
Michael Graham has met the enemy, and they is us. Fifty years after the Greatest Generation fought and died on foreign soil to rescue democracy from fascism, the question facing America is Can we survive the Dumbest Generation? Can a nation of uniquely uninformed idiots living in a culture that celebrates stupidity possibly govern themselves? If the question sounds harsh, you havent read The Dumbest Generation or (author Michael Graham would argue) the Palm Beach Post. From the bumbling balloteers of Florida to the crush of Dumb-and-Dumber culture filling the neighborhood multi-plex, Graham sees a nation of people who should be denied the right to vote in any election not sponsored by TV Guide. Graham, a former-stand-up comic turned GOP political consultant reveals what people inside the election business have known for years: In the America of the year 2001, ignorant voters arent a problem, theyre a target demographic. They were the foundation and the demise of the ill-fated Gore campaign, and continuing efforts by both political parties to court rather than shun them put American democracy at risk.