They’re behind a pay wall, but I just wanted to mention two engaging Chronicle of Higher Education articles on the so-called digital generation. Mark Bauerlein, author of the provocative book, The Dumbest Generation, offers a scathing critique of the over-reliance on digital technologies as teaching tools. While I think that Bauerlein’s account of a “digital generation” underestimates differences within current college-age students, some of his larger arguments about why we need to reconsider current educational practices are well worth addressing.
In the same CHE issue, Siva Vaidhyanathan counters the generational myth, pointing out that not all students are equally “wired,” pointing out that “the levels of comfort with, understanding of, and dexterity with digital technology varies greatly within every class. Yet it has not changed in the aggregate in more than 10 years.” I’ve had the opportunity to teach in a variety of university settings, and this observation strikes me as basically right. More to the point, generational arguments obscure the different ways that students use digital technologies (text messaging, playing games, downloading music, making videos). Siva goes on to compare Bauerlein’s Generation to an earlier anti-media jeremiad, Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which Postman argued that TV would scramble our thought patterns. In that regard, I would agree that Bauerlein ascribes too much power to digital technologies in shaping practice.