How would you classify someone as “dumb”? Low IQ? Bad GPA? No common sense? Webster defines intelligence as, “the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations.” Obviously, this makes way more sense than our attempt at quantifying intelligence, which I think the generations before us are starting to realize is impossible. It’s sociological too. We think if you can’t add 2+2 you’re unintelligent, but I’m sure other cultures think if you can’t weave a blanket out of bamboo then you’re unintelligent. Our society has managed to create a system in which your inability to conform to their interpretation of intelligence could possibly ruin your life (e.g. bad SAT scores=no college= no career = poverty), while the so called “impoverished” cultures have a system in which intelligence determines your ability to survive by giving you real skills.
There has been talk that our generation is the dumbest of all thanks to social networking and the internet. Basically it has ruined our ability to concentrate and become educated, and also destroyed our social skills.
Our “now” mentality makes the everyday learning of school boring. Learning about the Civil War becomes boring because it’s not about “me”. Unfortunately what education fails to comes to terms with is how completely out of touch with reality it is. Sitting in a classroom and listening to the endless babble of the monotone teacher about how Thanksgiving exists because the Indians and Pilgrims loved each other is not only boring but completely inaccurate. So what if we think sitting in a classroom listening is boring?! If I can talk to a Native American about what happened when America was “discovered” (quite the euphemism for “taken over by murdering everyone there” huh?) not only will that be much more educational, but also more interesting. Learning should be interactive and now with the internet, it has the potential to be.
People need to teach people, not teachers teaching people. If teachers are getting paid 50K in areas with high tax bracket families, and 20K in areas with the lowest tax bracket, it’s pretty easy to see why the quality of education is so unequal. Who came up with this whole entire educational system that puts the rich on top and the poor on bottom? Certainly not my generation…
Then there’s the argument that conversing over a computer all the time completely diminishes your real life people skills. The generation’s prior to us only had the institutions of their parents, their school, their friends and most likely their church to influence what they did. Who your parents hung out with determined your school and your friends, and you grew up in this tiny bubble never really knowing what anyone thought outside of your world, and never really caring because you had no means to find out. What you thought, essentially, was what everyone around you thought. Unfortunately that was a small group of people.
Now, not only do I have the original institutions, but my generation get’s to be influenced by this whole new institution: The Internet. Not only allowing me to connect instantly with my friends, but also their friends, and their friends, and so on. I have the opinions and views of millions of more people than I would have had originally. I can learn about other cultures, other religions, other interpretations, and therefore form my own, genuine opinion.
I would like to argue that prior to the internet, the generation before was essentially replicas of their parents. You had the occasional free thinker, but generally people had the opinions and views of their parents because that’s all they had the ability to be exposed to. Now we can all be free thinkers. Which will also make it much harder for our society to be manipulated, or influenced.
It is also easy to argue that our generation is much more tolerant than the one’s prior. With all this access to people nothing like us, this makes perfect sense. Tolerance, in essence, should lead to peace. Acceptance of religious difference, sexuality difference, thewayyouliveyourlife difference, will inevitably lead to a society with less war, less poverty, and less crime. Our society is much closer to achieving that than any one prior. It’s all thanks to this giant database of information and people that we’re lucky to have.
In the end, we look to the past and we see, segregation, wars, failing economies, and poverty. Then we look to the future and see it being more equal, fair, and intelligent now that we can all influence one another, think freely, and form our own opinion.
If my generation wasn’t able to do that, I would be calling the new one dumb too. After all, when I was in kindergarten and someone drew a better picture than me, I called them dumb.
I’d be jealous too, Mark Bauerlein.
