SF Chron: American kids, dumber than dirt
Actual studies giving past data, as opposed to impressions, is frightfully difficult to come by.
American kids, dumber than dirt
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2007/10/24/notes102407.DTL&type=printable
[Linked by Arts & Letters Daily.]
7.10.24
Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in
U.S. history
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
I have this ongoing discussion with a longtime reader who also just
so happens to be a longtime Oakland high school teacher, a
wonderful guy who's seen generations of teens come and generations
go and who has a delightful poetic sensibility and quirky outlook
on his life and his family and his beloved teaching career.
And he often writes to me in response to something I might've
written about the youth of today, anything where I comment on the
various nefarious factors shaping their minds and their
perspectives and whether or not, say, EMFs and junk food and cell
phones are melting their brains and what can be done and just how
bad it might all be.
His response: It is not bad at all. It's absolutely horrifying.
My friend often summarizes for me what he sees, firsthand, every
day and every month, year in and year out, in his classroom. He
speaks not merely of the sad decline in overall intellectual acumen
among students over the years, not merely of the astonishing spread
of lazy slackerhood, or the fact that cell phones and iPods and
excess TV exposure are, absolutely and without reservation,
short-circuiting the minds of the upcoming generations. Of this, he
says, there is zero doubt.
Nor does he speak merely of the notion that kids these days are
overprotected and wussified and don't spend enough time outdoors
and don't get any real exercise and therefore can't, say, identify
basic plants, or handle a tool, or build, well, anything at all.
Again, these things are a given. Widely reported, tragically
ignored, nothing new.