 Mark Bauerlein's disturbing book The Dumbest Generation (Tarcher/Penguin 2008) makes the case that growing wealth and technological advancement have stunted the intellectual growth of America's youth.
Here's his summary from page 16 (with my emphases):
...the middle-class teenager may attend a decent high school and keep a B+ average, pack an iPod and a handheld, volunteer through his church, save for acar, and aim for college, and still not know what the Soviet Union was or how to compute a percentage. None of the customary obstacles to knowledge interfere--poverty, bad schools, late-night jobs--but they might as well, given the knowledge outcomes. All the occasions and equipment for learning are in place, but he uses them for other purposes. Adolescents have always wasted their time and chances, of course, but the Dumbest Generation has raised the habit into a brash and insistent practice. No cohort in human history has opened such a fissure between its material conditions and its intellectual attainments. None has experienced so many technological enhancements and yielded so little mental progress.
If Bauerlein is right, the future of America is dismal indeed.
What we've done in our family to encourage
reading and discourage media consumption
I'd like to hear from you what your family has done to buck these trends. Here are seven things our family has done:
1. We as parents set the example for reading. Come to our house and you'll notice books and magazines everywhere, but no video games and almost no television viewing. No computers, televisions or stereos in individual bedrooms--including ours.
2. We read together as a family. I'll pick an adventure series and read a chapter to the children every evening when I'm home. Our favorite read-alouds have included the Scout and Wambu series by Piet Prins, the Trailblazers missionary heroes series, and the Bark of the Bog Owl trilogy by Jonathan Roers.
3. We make books available. Our family favorites include:
- The G.A. Henty adventure series
- The Bark of the Bog Owl series by Jonathan Rogers.
- The Elsie Dinsmore series
- Youth With a Mission Publishing's missionary biography and heroes from history series
- Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys series
4. We pay our kids to read. Yep, a penny a page for books of their choice, and up to $5 a book for books we want them to read.
5. Our kids pay us $2 per half hour for computer gaming. In effect, the kids must read two books for every half hour they play.
6. No video game consoles. We told the children that we would invest in things for them to play outside, but would not buy a Wii or Playstation. So far we've invested in a trampoline, a playhouse, a tree fort, a zip line, a motor bike, airsoft guns, kayaks, a ripstick and bicycles.
7. We travel. I'm traveling a lot to speak, of course, but I make the most of it by bringing children with me and traveling as often as possible as a family. We listen to audiobooks as we drive, and we try to work in as many historical sites as possible. To prepare for those experiences we read books together or listen to historical dramatizations on audio CD.
None of this is rocket science, of course, but it seems to be working so far.
Please e-mail and let me know what your family has done or currently does to encourage intellectual development! You can reach me at jeff@passingthebaton.org.
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