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Generation differences research essay
Generation differences research essay
Generation differences research essay
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Andrew Shepley 10-22-2015 How Stupid Do You Think We Are? Many people refer to this generation of kids as the "dumbest generation." I disagree, our present generation is not the "dumbest generation," our minds have simply been developed differently. Our minds are wired much differently than our parents, and our parents minds are wired differently from our grandparents. Everyone has been brought up at different times and everything seems to be changing generation to generation. Technology is an area that as changed the most over the past few years and has nearly influenced every aspect of life, specifically the way we learn. Mizuko Ito's article, Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project, states that the youth are exploring brand new ways of expressing themselves through series of trial and error. We are now able to learn new skills our parents and grandparents never learned in school such as creating websites or making power points. For instance, we will never learn to use shorthand. Learning different subjects than our …show more content…
Technology is not killing our ability to write, but it is reviving it and pushing our literacy to new directions. Andrea Lunsford, from Stanford University, conducted an experiment to scrutinize college students way of writing. Her results were alarming, "I think we are in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization." Lunsford discovered that only 38% of students writing occurred within the classroom, the rest was written in their own free time. Most of our socializing now takes place online and always involves text or writing. Before the Internet, most of our communication was verbal. The only time Americans wrote was for a school assignment and if their job required writing. Otherwise most people didn't write another paragraph once they left
In the article “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy,” writer Clive Thompson argues that the widespread use of technology and social media does not make kids illiterate and unable to form coherent sentences, but instead, keeps them actively writing and learning. Thompson’s article is based off of a study done by Andrea Lunsford, a writing professor at Stanford University. Thompson agrees with Lunsford that the use of social media and the Internet allow students to be creative and get better at writing. In his article, Thompson quotes John Sutherland, an English professor at University College of London, to inform the audience of the opposite side of the argument. He states, “Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering, video and PowerPoint have
“The Dumbest Generation” is a title no group of people want to behold. Nonetheless, people under age thirty have been given this belittling title. To those who go off questions about obsolete general knowledge rather than the ability to take in and evaluate knowledge, this title may seem quite fitting. However, Millennials aren’t quite as dull as they’ve been perceived to be. The ability of Millennials to absorb information, rather than know general facts, and their use of contemporary technology as reading and writing resources has proven that they are quite an innovative and bright generation.
In “Cultural Illiteracy,” a preface to the novel The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein critically evaluates how technological distractions affect the younger generation. Bauerlein states that “digital diversions” are cutting the younger generation off from culturally enhancing mediums and is in turn making the younger generation less intelligent. Though Bauerlein is correct about the increase of peer pressure due to technology, he is mistaken about how technology is making the younger generation unintelligent.
In “Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids’ Grant Penrod goes over how intellectuals are cast aside and even belittled for their academic achievements, where athletes are given high praise and put on pedestals. He gives examples of this by stating how a football team in Arizona won a championship, and were congratulated and praised, while the three academic teams, who also won championships were barely recognized. Penrod’s use of real-life examples is especially persuasive because it helps emphasize the point he is trying to make in his essay.
Clive Thompson asserts in his essay, The New Literacy, that people today are writing more than ever as they socialize online. Nowadays, almost everybody uses social media, but it is more popular amongst younger people. Teenagers text and tweet every little thought that pops up in their head. However, numerous scholars can argue that texting and tweeting defiles the serious academic writing with slang and “text speak.” By way of contrast, Thompson claims that using shortened language and smileys online does not degrade a person’s abilities to write well in an academic paper. Furthermore, composing texts and tweets online can help an individual with their writing. By communicating online, we are able to learn grammar and writing through our own
Technology opens the door to opportunities that past generations didn't have and that have expanded our abilities over a period of time . Andrea Lunsford , also a professor at a university , is quoted in Clive Thompsons article (source7) “The new literacy”saying that we
Many were once against typography when it first emerged. One prime example was Plato, who Ong and Postman both mention at some point in their work. In fact, Ong states that “Writing, Plato has Socrates say in the Phaedrus, is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can only be in the mind. Writing is simply a thing, something to be manipulated, something inhuman, artificial, a manufactured product” (Ong 27). He then goes on to say that many have made the same argument about computers today. However, the essential message from this quote is that many believed that these technologies would have a negative effect on the way we think. Ong goes on to disprove Plato’s rationale by explaining that “…his philosophically analytic thought, including his analysis of the effects of writing, was only possible because of the effects that writing was having on mental processes” (Ong 29). Due to the fact that he was even able to analyze typography meant that he was subsuming to typography’s nature. Postman would agree that Plato would not have been able to formulate his analytic views if it were not for writing. Postman wrote that literacy is highly rational. He iterated that discourse in a culture dominated by print tend to have a coherent arrangement of an idea, a fact, or a claim. Postman would explain to Ong that the cause of this is similar to some of the reasons Plato
According to Mark Bauerlein, those who were born after 1982, known as Generation Y, are the world’s dumbest generation. Bauerlein argues that this generation is not meeting the standards that he believes today’s technology should allow them to reach and it is hard to argue with all of his statistics on test scores, but Bauerlein obviously does not understand this generation. Who does he think is behind it all? It takes a genius to create new technology, no matter what the technology is used for or how other people perceive it. It did not just appear out of nowhere. Generation Y is not the dumbest generation, because if they were that would mean Bauerlein’s generation failed to raise Generation Y, technology just creates itself, and test scores determine intelligence.
While preparing for one of his college lectures, Dennis Baron, a professor and linguistics at the University of Illinois, began playing with the idea of how writing has changed the world we lived in and materials and tools we use in everyday life. This lecture slowly transitioned into “Should Everybody Write?” An article that has made many wonder if technology has made writing too easy for anyone to use or strengthens a writer's ability to learn and communicate their ideas. Baron uses rhetorical strategies in his article to portray to his audience his positive tone, the contrast and comparison of context and his logical purpose.
With technology on the rise students will be spending more time typing, and less time actually writing. Rafael Guerrero states in his article “Are We Seeing the Death of Cursive?” that “[I]n the minds of some, the need for teachers to spend more time getting students to meet state standards and master computer technology has made cursive less relevant.” A large concern for teachers today is to get students to the point of being able to satisfy state standards rather than teaching them material which will benefit them in the future. Teaching third graders how to write in cursive has been one of the main lessons taught for years. Just because the technology is on the rise it should not mean that children do not get the same education generations before have received. Depriving children of this knowledge would be unfair. Students need this writing skill in order to read historical documents from the past. Students will also need to know it when they take the PSAT and SAT in high school for the written statement. Teaching young children how to write in a whole new form of writing is a daunting task, but it is a necessity for them to be able to develop properly and succeed in
Txting is Killing Language. JK!!! is a 2013 TED Talk by John McWhorter that suggests texting is a linguistic form of writing like speaking. Throughout history, literacy and writing ability have been thought as declining, and texting has become a sloppy, subtler form. However, McWhorten believes texting is not writing at all. Writing is a conscious process, allowing writers to look backwards and edit, whereas talking is telegraphic. Casual speaking is looser than writing, whereas formal speaking is talking like writing. If you speak like you write, you might want to also write like you speak; texting allows that. Until recently, casual speaking was problematic to write because even if you can type as fast as you speak, you need someone
“We Are All Confident Idiots” is an engaging article that forces the reader to puzzle over important questions regarding self awareness, intelligence, ignorance, and the way we make decisions. Dunning effectively uses tone, ethos, and diction to inform readers of the dangers of making ignorant, misinformed decisions and not admitting to what one doesn’t know. Though most of his examples and evidence are credible and logical, Dunning occasionally glosses over the flaws within some of his examples, leading a critical reader to question some of the conclusions that Dunning has drawn.
Technology has helped humans make their lives easy to live, safe, and overall well connected to the world. While there are some positives of technology one simply can’t ignore the negatives that come with it. Because of technology it has in a way made humans forget to do the basic things. Millennials use technology for everything. They read many documents and books through laptops, smartphones, and tablets. They write many documents and written works on applications like Microsoft Word and Google Documents. And they rely on technology to do the math for them, even the most basic kind of math. Such technology is causing the millennials to rely on it too much and when it comes to a moment where one millennial who doesn’t have any technology to help them out than their true colors tend to show. Although not all millennials are alike, some millennials will probably dispute that certain millennials fall under this category and that there are plenty of millennials who do know how to read, write and calculate things. Although generation x may seem concern to only a small group of millennials who are not the brightest, they should in fact focus on a larger scale on the millennial generation. Not every millennial are the same and many millennials have different opinions on what is considered to be a
It is difficult to escape the influence of technology on modern life. It lurks behind every door: the classroom, home, office, and store. There are many who are resistant to new technology, saying that technology causes harm to society. These claims are often made without the realization that technology also includes important and indispensable parts in their life such as writing and the tools for writing. Writing was one of the first technologies invented. Technology has now become so entrenched in the majority of cultures around the world that it is hard to imagine a life or society without writing. For those that maintain a majority of technology beyond writing is harmful, imagine the difficulty in writing without the help of other technologies, which includes pencils, paper, computers, printing presses, and a number of other technological aids.
I agree with Amy Goldwasser for the most part of her article especially when she says that, “the Internet has turned teenagers into honest documentarians of their own lives, they are reporters embedded in their homes, school and own heads.” Although these kids spend so much time on the Internet, we tend to overlook how getting online has enhanced their ability to write and express themselves. Many of these teens have discovered their abilities in writing because of this medium. Before, one of the teachers’ concerns was the students’ lost of interest in writing. However, when social networking became popular, they become willing to write.