A literate or e literate that is the question in chapter 2 of the dumbest generation mark bauerlein. Free pdf the dumbest generation summary by chapter. Buy The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. › Visit Amazon's Mark Bauerlein Page. Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein. Bauerlein uses the introduction to show the bigger picture of where his discussion originates from.

MIKE PESCA, host: You know that slogan from the '60s, don't trust anyone over 30? ROBERT SMITH, host: Yeah, man. (Soundbite of laughter) PESCA: You hep (ph) to that? PESCA: Well a new book proclaims, don't trust anyone under 30. The point being. (Whispering) They're not that bright. Shhh, don't want to hurt their self-esteem.

Mark Bauerlein is an English professor at Emory University and author of 'The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes our Future.' I talked to him about his thesis, that the digital generation is pretty much filled with idiots. (Soundbite of reverse playback) PESCA: In a nutshell, small words, so that they can be understood by today's youth, what is going on with the kids today? MARK BAUERLEIN (Professor, Emory University; Author, 'The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future; Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30'): Digital natives, kids who've grown up with Google and search engines and screens with themselves, they spend most of their time contacting each other, and this leads to the forms of communication that take place among kids, teen slang, reduced vocabulary. We don't look at complex arguments coming out of students when they're assigned papers. Their prose style tends to be reduced down to that least common teen denominator.

PESCA: And yet we have all read so many stories, whole books have been written about the overscheduled, high-achieving kids who are vying for dwindling spots in Ivy League institutions, even schools like Emory, where you teach. But is the real message that those kids are the extreme outliers and 90 percent of this generation is just slackers? BAUERLEIN: Those kids are the elite. The fact is that the vast, vast majority of kids don't come close to that world. And we have to remember that, you know, estimates go as high as 30 percent of the number of kids going to ninth grade who never make it through 12th grade, nearly one-third already who is just completely out of the picture. PESCA: Even if you think the Internet and blogs are a net negative, and you clearly do, perhaps at times in the book you don't give them sufficient credit. Let me read something that you wrote.

'The Internet doesn't impart adult information; it crowds it out. Video games, cell phones and blogs don't foster rightful citizenship; they hamper it.' Isn't that a little broad? BAUERLEIN: It is, it is, and that was a conclusion, I think, running through all the other research.

And the thing we have to add to those statements is how kids usually use it. The Internet contains enormous, miraculous fountains of information, and this can be used for political purposes and civic purposes as well, and we're seeing a little bit of that with all the enthusiasm, I think, for the Obama campaign. But once again, I would limit the number of people doing it that way. It seems a pretty rarified group. Now, the key is can educators, can teachers and parents in the home as well, start steering all of that online activity toward productive, knowledge-inducing activity? And I'm pessimistic.

PESCA: 'The Dumbest Generation,' that's obviously a reference to the Greatest Generation. My question to you is, do you think the parents of those kids, kids who were born in maybe 1920 or 1922 who went on to fight and win World War II, do you think social scientists were saying, these kids, they're going to be the greatest generation? Or were they probably saying very similar things to what you're saying about, quote, unquote, 'the kids these days'? BAUERLEIN: I think they were complaining a lot about kids these days. That's a valid point. But I actually think that that's a healthy thing to happen in any society. It's good for old people to rebuke adolescents precisely for their adolescence, and it's good for adolescents to resent the elders for, perhaps, their rigidity about things, or their authoritarian attitudes.

I think we actually need a lot more statements about young people not knowing enough history, not reading as many books, work harder, come on, grow up. PESCA: One of my other complaints was that you have many studies about the ignorance of children. Now I'll just read one fact here.

'A July 2006 Pew Research Center report on newspaper readership found that only 26 percent of 18 to 29 year olds could name Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State.' And I read that and I said, that sounds pretty bad, except when you consider - here's a stat that's not in your book - in 2000, Gallup polled all Americans, not just those under 30, and only six percent could name the speaker of the House, while 66 percent could name the host of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' So it doesn't seem that adults are really that much brighter when it comes to civics or general world knowledge than students are. BAUERLEIN: I think it is true that we do see a lot of that among adults and kids as well, but I would come back to - kids do take in news, but it is often tailored news through what's called RSS feeds. They get news about what they already are interested in. They don't really want any news about anything beyond their sphere.

PESCA: These dumb kids who are under 30 will turn into responsible voters and news consumers and productive members of the economy by the time they have to. Do you think there's anything to that theory? BAUERLEIN: Well, here's what happens.

When kids graduate from college, when they're 22, 23 years old, they've lived in a pretty soft world. School is a very forgiving place. Then they hit the American workplace, which is a very unforgiving place. If you're not performing, if you're not productive, well, we have a problem. And so by the time they hit 30 years old, the American worker is an enormously responsible, dutiful, efficient worker and can compete with anyone, but here is what is missed, the chance to acquire an historical, civic and cultural knowledge that one should have gotten in those high school and college years, which should have happened through more museum visits, a little bit more time spent studying a foreign language, a little bit more historical curiosity. It's too late for that.

PESCA: Well, Mark Bauerlein, who is a professor of English at Emory and a former director of research and analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts, author of 'The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes our Future.' Thanks very much, Professor Bauerlein. BAUERLEIN: Thank you, sir. PESCA: So going into that interview with Mark Bauerlein, having just read 'The Dumbest Generation,' which is thorough and authoritative and provoking, I just kept thinking, haven't I heard this all somewhere before? (Soundbite of song 'Kids') Mr. PAUL LYNDE: (Singing) Kids! I don't know what's wrong with these kids today!

PESCA: Oh, yes, of course! That spiel is nearly an exact paraphrase of the song 'Kids' from the 1960 Broadway musical, 'Bye Bye Birdie.' So with that in mind, I thought I'd try an experiment. I crafted my first few questions in that interview to be exact echoes of the lyrics of 'Kids.'

For instance, here's what I asked Bauerlein. (Soundbite of reverse playback) PESCA: And how is the influx of technology that you talked about, and with it, the exodus of the written word, how does that affect the communication skills of the under-30 crowd? Which was my way of saying. (Soundbite of song 'Kids') Mr.

LYNDE: (Singing) Kids, who can understand anything they say? PESCA: So, I asked my questions, my NPR-ese version of the 'Kids' lyrics, and re-dubbed the whole thing so that 'Bye-Bye Birdie' winds up conducting an interview with the professor. I've got to say, it kind of works, so check it out on the blog because, you know, just sitting through 12 minutes of two dudes talking ain't going to fly with the young people. So, we did a mash up, yo! And to Paul Lynde, like the kids say, peace out, my friend, peace out.

(Soundbite of music) SMITH: That was NPR's Mike Pesca, far too smart to be contained by any radio program. Check him out on the blog at npr.org/bryantpark. Next on the show, Libertarians are meeting in Denver to pick their presidential candidate. No primaries, no caucuses, just good, old-fashioned, straightforward decision-making. A preview of their convention next.

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