Dumbest Generation Reflection, Reva Potter

I chose this book for my book study because my son owns a copy and it was handy. My son is fifteen and had not finished the book, and now I know why. He probably could not get past some of the statistical information in the beginning without the bullets, headlines, and graphics he loves so much, being a member of a pretty spatially-enhanced upbringing.

But I would like him to read it one day. We would have a lot to talk about. The text-rich environment of his upbringing (his mother is an English teacher after all) make reading and writing and test-taking easy for him. He also is very tech-savvy (obsessed?) and uses most of the usual social networks. His Facebook page is full of all the silly stuff the author laments in the book, and I know he is a truly shallow adolescent at times. But the Internet has also allowed him to experience more intellectual pursuits along with the shallow ones. He is a pretty good researcher for his classes, critical of websites and their authors; he consults the Internet for further information when he is reading something unfamiliar; he consults the Internet for classical music and pieces for oral interp competition; he looks up background information on new authors he is reading and new musicians he finds interesting. So far, I do not see a dangerous member of the Dumbest Generation in the making.
Is my teenager so unusual? This book makes me worried that he is. Sometimes so do the ridiculous additions my middle school students put on their IGoogle pages. So do the terrible habits students have when accepting Internet garbage as research, especially when students from most grade levels think that cutting and pasting text from an article and then “changing some words” is not plagiarism. So many things in this book really struck me at the teaching level, worrying me some, and justifying some of the worries I have already developed in the last 17 years of teaching.

I agree with Bauerlein on a number of points. The Internet and the constant social connections to peers allow them to detrimentally isolate themselves within their peer group. Most students have a disconnect with adults and are often offended that adults think they know more. This may be typical adolescent thinking, but we have not done students any favors by solidifying their thinking when we believe that students know more about using technology than the teachers. They may be able to navigate tools, but thoughtful use of tech tool requires mentoring and advising – the responsibility of teachers.

Bauerlein’s issues with screen time and lack of reading also hit home for me. I agree that vocabulary is a major issue in our culture. It is becoming a dividing line between students who will succeed at their goals and students who will not. It is impacting our students’ abilities to take tests, to critically understand information, and to express their thinking. The statistics on vocabulary, comparing print and screen sources, was astounding to me. No wonder students wait for me to explain directions two or more ways after they read them for themselves; they do not have the vocabulary confidence to know what to do. My hope is that as a language arts teacher, I am using technology to improve vocabulary, showing students tools such as visual thesaurus and the components of online dictionaries to make them better consumers of online vocabulary tools.

This book raises implication about how teachers may want to approach the validity of technology use in their classrooms. When we use tech tools, we have to be aware that we also need to teach the tech tool. It would be a rare middle school student who is an expert researcher online – this needs to be taught. A middle school student will probably not create a Prezi with advanced vocabulary unless the teacher requires this. Student authors will not collaborate in Google Docs with valid editing comments unless these are mentored and modeled. The Dumbest Generation may be happy to stay that way, but their teachers should not be happy to let them.