The Dumbest Generation Summary

In Grant Penrod 's essay, Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids, Penrod argues that intellectualism is declining in America, not because of poor education or electronics, but because of the current public perception of intellectuals (Penrod 762).

The Greatest Generation written by Tom Brokaw is a well-respected book. The book is broken up into different categories where Brokaw tells the stories of individuals who participated in the war. Their life before the war and after the war. The first chapter of the book is called “Ordinary people”. This chapter is explains the individuals who had an impact on the war and went back to the normal life after. The second chapter “Home front people” are those who participated in the war by providing support and also the production of war goods industries.

“America Needs Its Nerds” an article created by Leonid Fridman, puts forth a pertinent issue in today’s society: intellectually adept students are ostracized. Fridman argues that smart, curious students need to stop feeling ashamed for being smart and curious. Society needs to change because their current philosophy towards intellect is one of pessimism. Fridman develops these arguments in his essay by utilizing the rhetorical strategy of parallelism, drawing conclusions, and through his use of diction.

“Intelligence is closely associated with formal education- the type of schooling a person has, how much and how long- and most people seem to move comfortably from that notion to a belief that work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence” (Rose). What Rose is trying to infer is that just because you are labeled blue collar: meaning you have to earn your income from manual labor, and have lack of educational knowledge, does not mean you cannot earn the knowledge in your work career. There are many opportunities to learn from your job even if you are less experienced. “...One who is so intelligent about so many things in life seems unable to apply that intelligence to academic work. What doesn’t occur to us, though, is that schools and colleges might be at fault for missing the opportunity to tap into such street

The mental capacity is treated as a disadvantage in the America, despite the fact it already helped the country many times. This long-term problem became the main topic of the Leonid Fridman’s essay “America Needs its Nerds”. The work first appeared on January 11, 1990 in the New York Times as a part of the series “Voices of the New Generation”. The author spoke about the negative attitude the American society has to smart people and demonstrates it with the usage of words like “nerd” or “geek”. Fridman’s essay applies to different groups of people, as the problem exists on different layers of the society: from schools to universities and the adult life. The author’s purpose is to demonstrate

Dumb is defined as not being able to read or write. In every generation there are changes among each generation after another to a certain extent. In today’s generation it is solely based on the uprising of complex technology being used. Past generations have only heard of writing handwritten letters by mail or only having a telephone to communicate. Now today it is about text messaging, cellular phones, emails, and etc. There is an ongoing debate to whether this new form of technology is positive or negative to the under thirty generation. In the book “The Dumbest Generation”, Mark Bauerlein claims the under thirty generation is the “dumbest” generation to be known. The under thirty generation is not the “dumbest” generation because they are able to process information in a different creative form, engage in technological games to sharpen their minds, and use advanced technology

“Hidden Intellectualism,” by Gerald Graff starts off with an older argument between being book smart and street smart. Throughout the reading, Graff uses his own life experiences to critique the education system today. Points made focus on the idea of overlooking the intellectual potential of those who come across as being, “street smart”. Different authors cited in the reading to show how to accept another’s different intellectual. However, we realize that people who come across as being intellectual weren’t always labeled as that.

It is easy to agree that, in today’s society, it’s the expected norm for high school and college students to be spread thin between school work and an abundant amount of extra curricular activities; all for what? An extra line filled on a résumé? To many, this may seem a bit excessive, but to the students, it seems necessary to keep a competitive edge in order to be successful among their peers. Frank Bruni wrote a compelling article addressing why today’s students are far overworked. In Frank Bruni’s article entitled “Today’s Exhausted Superkids,” he effectively pushes his point, which is students are under a tremendous amount of pressure to succeed and gain a “competitive edge” to the point they are making decisions that can not only damage themselves, but their futures.

In her essay “In defence of the iGeneration,” Renee Wilson argues that today’s technology has benefitted not only the students, but also the generation as a whole. The advancement in technology allows for change, innovation and creativity that result in one of the best generations yet. Although Wilson generalizes today’s iGeneration, she succeeds in providing a compelling argument. Much of her argument is supported by scientific evidence and personal experiences that demonstrate the ability of the iGeneration to accept change and provide self-actualization.

Humanity needs to change before all information is censored. In “College at Risk,” Andrew Delbanco discusses liberal learning and the “whole person” that may not be developed in college due to a lack of income. Liberal learning develops the “whole person” by teaching the basic ethics and morals a person should have. Anne Applebaum presents examples of censorship in her essay, “The Decline of American Press Freedom.” She uses China and Yale to make the point that differing forms of censorship are doing more harm than good. In the formal essay “Making it in America,” Adam Davidson brings up what other people tend to ignore. He discusses the injustice the low income factory workers are receiving, even though productivity has grown. Humanity

America, often lauded as a land of freedom, is a place where revolution was started and freedom is proclaimed. The United States is recognized for the prevalence of personal rights, as a place the persecuted long to reach. Leonid Fridman argues against these concepts in his essay “America Needs Its Nerds.” He suggests that personal liberties are being restricted because of “rampant anti-intellectualism” and that the U.S. will suffer future consequences in terms of world power if “nerds” are not supported. To be clear, Fridman argues for the academically talented and information-seeking students in today’s society. He feels it is unfair that these students are too afraid to pursue intelligence to its fullest or to admit how much they study, so he presents an argumentative essay detailing the inequities and grievances these students face. He makes a convincing argument through his powerful diction, dynamic tone, emotional and

Megan McArlde is a journalist and blogger who focuses most of her writing on things like finance, government policy, and economics. In her article “The College Bubble,” a magazine article published in Newsweek on September 17, 2012, McArlde writes about how the “Mythomania about college has turned getting a degree into an American neurosis” (1). She focuses a lot on the value of getting a college education, and makes an argument that all the time and money spent on earning a degree may not be worth it in the end. McArlde uses several strategies to appeal to her reader’s, and does a great job of effectively using the Logos, Pathos, and Ethos appeals throughout her article.

In the essay “No books, please; we’re students” writer, John Leo compares students decades ago with students from 1995; their willingness to become engaged in academic experiences. Overtime, a larger proportion of students haven't taken education seriously. For example, chemistry professor Henry Bauer has kept “charts for 10 years” to show that his students had “progressively worse on the finals,” knowing that the questions are exactly like the ones that showed up on the “mid semester quizzes.” Clearly, over the years, a chunk of students willingness to work has declined. Students has become “progressively more ignorant, inattentive, inarticulate,” according to Penn state professor; because students didn't ever look back at the explanations,

Majority of people now a days live to tell their rags to riches story of how they’ve acquired if not all a great deal of what they own due to their individual hard work. Once a young adult is enrolled in college they consume a massive amount of responsibility and gain their own sense of independence if they didn’t already have a strong sense of the concept. “Students today aren’t lazy”, Dunn said. “But if you look at what tuition is now and what the minimum wage is now, it’s not possible given that they’re up against” (President John Dunn of Western Michigan University). This is the exact point that author Svati Kirsten Narula is making when she makes use of an effective level of rhetoric’s in order to convince readers that the task of putting

In the article, “Anti-Intellectualism and the “Dumbing Down” of America” Ray Williams discusses the increasing trend of anti-intellectualism in American culture. There is an anti-intellectualism that exists in American culture that is the result of the unpopularity of being smart in High School, the lack of the importance of teachers in the U.S. compared to Japan and the effect of reality TV and pop culture. Williams indicates that one of the reasons that anti-intellectualism exists is that education in the United States is not as strong as it once was. Williams says, “After leading the world for decades in 24-34 year olds with university degrees, the U.S. is now in 12th place. The World Economic Forum ranked the U.S. at 52nd among 139 nations