Mark Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation

In his book The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein states that the Millennial generation, with their dependence on technology, are the dumbest generation. He says that Millennials have an unprecedented lack of general knowledge, and this foreshadows trouble in the future when this generation takes control of the agencies of power. Bauerlein’s analysis ignores the nuances of generational ideological priorities, reaches damning conclusions from weak and sparse data, and hypocritically ignores the historical precedents for the argument he is making.
In the book, the author posits that the improvement of American life on many metrics is a “shallow advent” (Doc 1). He then goes on to say that the “enlightenment” that one would expect to come along

with endless and unfettered access to information simply has not happened. He is wrong. Although he points to a poll that supposedly shows younger people with lower “knowledge levels” than those older, he’s ignoring the fact that with the use of technology today, people are able to communicate with every type of person imaginable. The definition of enlighten is to “give (someone) greater knowledge and understanding about a subject or situation.” Through technological advancement, Americans and people around the world are able to see and better understand the murder of the Rohingya in Myanmar, the plight of black men in Baltimore, and the danger of being the transgender woman next door. This gives fuel to a culture of young people in this country fighting an intersectional movement for universal justice and human rights, even if they don’t realize it. Silence and turning blind eyes are increasingly unacceptable in our society. Millenials don’t suffer from a lack of being enlightened, they hold different values on what they wish to be enlightened on.
Not only does Bauerlein make an tunnel visioned argument of ignorance, the data he uses to back that argument up is feeble at best. After he makes the generalization that “...survey research shows, knowledge and skills haven’t kept pace [with material gains].” He cites a single poll from 2007 that says 56% of adults under 30 have “low knowledge levels.” He does not go on to address what is meant by “low knowledge levels” or the methodology the poll used. In contrast, in her piece The Dumbest Generation? Don't Be Dumb, Sharon Begley says “IQ scores in every country that measures them, including the United States, have been rising since the 1930s” (Doc 2). This, opposed to a single poll, shows a trend, and this trend shows an increase in thinking capacity. An 80-year trend line is simply superior.
Finally, Bauerlein is putting forward a tired, centuries-old argument under the auspices of a new realization that needs to be said.

Throughout human society, people have decried new advancements and way to disseminate information as making us less prepared for the future. After the development of the printing press and the easy production of books in the late 1400s, many scholars felt and wrote (ironically) about the fact that they thought these books would lead to the degradation of society. Additionally, a 1962 article in the Foreign Service Journal remarks on the lack of basic information among candidates for civil service posts. “My initial surprise was to find among the candidates an abysmal ignorance of so elementary a subject as the geography of the United States” (Doc 5), the author writes. Mark Bauerlein is trying to saying the advent of technology is going to make us dumb and cripple our ability to properly confront the future, while not only have people been saying things like this for hundreds of years, but Americans specifically appear to have always have had some form of a lack of general knowledge to some extent. If people applying to work for the US Foreign Service in the ‘60s don’t even know where the state of Ohio is, then Millennials aren’t unique, but simply toeing the

line.
Although older generations may feel technology is making “kids today” dumber and devoid of values, that is not backed up when looking at the context of history, statistics, and the social reality. The Millennial generation is not a generation inferior to past generations, but simply different. Saying Millennials are dumb is an obnoxious generalization that is at best ignorant, and at worst hypocritical and damaging.