ReflectionPV

Bauerlein plays the devil's advocate throughout his book, The Dumbest Generation, to forwarn the nation's "mentors" that it's time to get serious about determining high priority principles. He uses the advent of the digital era as the backdrop for the demise of individual pride and responsibility. He presents statistics and studies by the chapter which would appear to support some very credible and reasonable concerns, and his arguments are well thought out and logically presented.

What is not so evident, is what naturally occurs once our young "leave the nest," so to speak. If we take a minute to review our own lives, it is certain that there was a moment for each one of us, when our attention was turned away from our own desires and impacted directly by an outsider. I might associate this with the finding of a lifemate or birthing of a child, for another, it could be the meeting of a significant friend or a lifechanging event. Typically that kind of life altering maturation doesn't happen in our teens or maybe, even in our twenties. There is no specific season in which we ripen as individuals.

I followed Bauerlein faithfully through his book, silently nodding my head as I visualized the classrooms at work, but as chapter six began - with the reference to Rip Van Winkle and his focus on the responsibility of American youth towards their civic duties, he began (or I did) to draw a line in the sand between us. If our children were politically active and hosted protests and intellectual all-nighters under giant trees, would that prove their social worthiness and safeguard our nation's future? I'm not so sure. A nation may rise or fall based more upon the greed of man as an animal, than on the literacy level of it's people.

If we go back to his preface, Bauerlein himself tells us he never expected people to simply accept his point of view, he wrote the book to aggitate the "mentors" and get them talking and thinking. "The realistic goal was to open the issue...to blunt the techno-zeal...to counter the sanguine portraits of informed and agile teens...' (p. vii)  I think he has accomplished that goal.