Reading Reflection # 10

Hello and welcome back to another exciting issue of typing about what I read,

After watching The Millennials: The Dumbest Generation or the Next Great Generation, I agree with both speakers to a certain extent. I believe that students today have the potential to be the next great generation; however, students today are able to fall through the cracks and become possible some of the dumbs people ever. Mark Bauerlein points out that there has been a drastic drop in reading amongst people between the ages of 18-23 despite the increase in the number of public libraries, schools and universities, and the Internet. For many, the primary source of the Internet is  a venue for social networking. More and more, high school seniors are deemed not ready for college, and more entering freshmen are taking remedial classes. The various forms of technology in every one's everyday life is continuously distracting students. The accumulation of these factors puts students today at the risk of being the dumbest generation. However, it is also true that because of the continuous advancements made in technology and science, students today can become the next great generation. Neil Howe explains that there has actual be a steady positive change in almost every category for today's students.
There has been an increase in voters between the ages of 18- 30 in recent years. Also, there has been a decrease in anti-social movements and violence, while categories such as child-parent relationships and community service have seen a steady increase over the years. Howe claims that kids are smarter today than ever before because of the emergence of technology in classrooms. So are students become dumbing? Well statistics can be tricky because Howe only spoke in terms of percentages, but there are more people today than there was during the 70's and 80's. Therefore, percentages can be misleading. Also, there are more students attending college then ever before in the U.S., but should all of these students attended college? Perhaps the reason why there are more students needing to take remedial classes is because there are many students who should not go to college that do go because our society views college as a necessity to be successful. If technology is distracting our students, then why are so many schools going 1-1? Howe points out that we are always comparing today's students the standards of students in previous generations. However, it is impossible to see how student's from the past would perform under our current standards in education. Howe also made an interested example when he compared science fairs from the 50's and today. Back then science fairs had volcanoes that foamed over the top, and today students create machines that do a number of various operations. Also, games cannot be such a bad thing when they are becoming more and more popular as a method of teaching. The SIMS is a much more accurate way to teach kids about life than the board game Life. There is a steady trend worldwide that kids today are much more informed than any other group of students throughout history. However, this really is about the smarter kids of today, because the students on the bottom of the spectrum still could be considered the dumbest kids ever.