By MARK BAUERLEIN
New York Post
(Click photo to enlarge)
May 11, 2008 -- Given the opportunities for knowledge and culture in America today, one would think we were on the verge of a golden age of intelligence.
From 1997 to 2002, the number of museums climbed from 3,860 to 4,533, while there are hundreds more public library outlets and post-secondary schools.
And, of course, we have the Internet, which provides anyone with a user password, library card, or student ID a gate way to books, periodicals, documents, art works, maps, time lines, definitions, laws, facts, statistics . . .
For young people, money and leisure are plentiful, too. A 2003 Harris poll estimated that Generation Y spends $172 billion per year, and Nellie Mae reports that 83 percent of college students own at least one credit card. Money, time, access, encouragement - all the ingredients are in place for the creation of informed, engaged citizen generation. Indeed, every disquisition on the Knowledge Economy urges them to become learned and literate, and young people have responded by enrolling in college in record numbers (17.5 million in 2005).
And yet, no enlightenment.
For all their reputed savviness and worldliness, just about every measure of the knowledge and literacy of teens and young adults produces abysmal results. On the last National Assessment of Education Progress History and Civics exams, two-thirds of high school seniors couldn't explain a photo of a theater whose portal read: "Colored Entrance." Forty-five percent of them couldn't make sense of a sample ballot. Last month's NAEP writing scores showed only one in four high school seniors reaching proficiency.
When the Chronicle of Higher Education surveyed college teachers last year, only 13 percent stated that students are "Very well prepared" for college level study. According to the 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, from 1992 to 2002 performance arts attendance by 18- to 24-year-olds dropped for classical and jazz, dance, ballet, and theater, and 57 percent of that age group hadn't read a single novel, short story, poem, or play on their own in the preceding 12 months.
It doesn't make sense, but the evidence is incontrovertible. Young people are tracking a course into ignorance and lassitude.
The combination of opportunity and ignorance marks a paradox, and one thing explains it. It stems from the central fact of their leisure lives - ironically, the very thing claimed to boost their knowledge and sharpen their wits: the Digital Universe. Young people log copious minutes every day and night online, texting and posting, downloading and uploading, multitasking to their parents' amazement. In 2005, Kaiser Foundation counted 295 minutes of screen time each day for 8- to 18-year-olds with media access (including TV and video). Of the 4.1 million blogs tallied in 2004, a little more than half were hosted by 13- to 19-year-olds, and the National School Boards Association found in 2007 that nearly one in three kids with online access keep a blog. Pew Research Center reports that 55 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds have a personal profile page.
Intellectuals and teachers view the Web as a miraculous source of knowledge and information. But the Web means something entirely different to these teens. It exists to enable what most every 16-year-old wants to do: talk to, act like, think like, compete against, gossip about, and play with peers. That's the nature of adolescence - peer pressure and school cliques - and the Web intensifies them like never before.
When Northwestern professor Eszter Hargittai polled college students for their favorite online destinations, Facebook and MySpace came up well in front. Only one in 20 ever checked a site on politics, economics, law, or policy.
The Digital Age has changed the threshold of adulthood. So caught up in social life, young Americans are aging, but not maturing. They are more adept with tools but less aware of moral meanings and historical backgrounds. Teen images and songs, hot gossip and games, and social networking wrap them in a bubble of puerile chatter, and adult affairs can't break through. The very technology claimed to generate a knowledge leap has produced the opposite for the age group on the cusp of responsibility. If it doesn't stop, the democracy we have, which depends on informed citizens revering their inheritance, is in trouble.
Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and the author of "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future" (Tarcher/Penguin).
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