R EVIEWS & R…

R EVIEWS
                       &                       R ECONSIDERATIONS



             Is Stupid Making Us Google?
                                   James Bowman

"I    mmersing myself in a book or a are signs that new forms of `reading'
      lengthy article used to be easy. are emerging as users `power browse'
      My mind would get caught up horizontally through titles, contents
 in the narrative or the turns of the pages and abstracts going for quick
 argument, and I'd spend hours stroll- wins. It almost seems that they go
 ing through long stretches of prose. online to avoid reading in the tradi-
 That's rarely the case anymore. Now tional sense."
 my concentration often starts to drift      Almost seems? I don't know about
 after two or three pages. I get fidg-    Mr. Carr, but I have no doubt that I go
 ety, lose the thread,                                     online to avoid read-
 begin looking for           The Dumbest Generation:       ing in the traditional
 something else to             How the Digital Age         sense. The question
                          Stupefies Young Americans and
 do. I feel as if I'm        Jeopardizes Our Future        is, how guilty do I
 always dragging my (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) need to feel about
 wayward brain back            By Mark Bauerlein           this? In his view,
 to the text. The deep     Tarcher ~ 2008 ~ 272 pp.        presumably, quite a
 reading that used to             $24.95 (cloth)           lot guilty, since by
 come naturally has                                        reading online as
 become a struggle." Sound familiar?      much as I do I am depriving myself
 Describing, in The Atlantic Monthly, of the ability to read offline. He takes
 his own struggles to keep his atten- this insight to an even more alarm-
 tion span from contracting like the ing conclusion in the end, writing
 wild ass's skin in Balzac's novel, that "as we come to rely on comput-
 Nicholas Carr cites a British study ers to mediate our understanding
 of research habits among visitors to of the world, it is our own intel-
 two serious scholarly websites which ligence that flattens into artificial
 suggests a more general problem: intelligence." And if that's the case
 that "users are not reading online in for veteran readers, think how much
 the traditional sense; indeed there worse it must be for the jeunesse dorée



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                                  James Bowman


of the information age, if they never         Effect shows up. The more they
developed the habits that accompany           involve "culturally reduced" mate-
"deep reading" in the first place.            rial, puzzles and pictures that
   It is these poor cultural orphans, for     require no historical or verbal
whom "information retrieval" online           context, the more the gains sur-
                                              face. Moreover, the significance
is the only kind of reading they
                                              of those gains apart from the test
know, who are the main concern of
                                              itself diminishes. "We know peo-
Mark Bauerlein in his new book, The           ple solve problems on IQ tests;
Dumbest Generation: How the Digital           we suspect those problems are so
Age Stupefies Young Americans and             detached, or so abstracted from
Jeopardizes Our Future. One would             reality," Flynn remarked, "that the
think that a whole future in jeopardy         ability to solve them can diverge
would be too serious a matter for the         over time from the real-world
flippancy of the rest of the subtitle:        problem-solving ability called
Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30.              intelligence."
But Professor Bauerlein, who teaches
                                              Elsewhere, Bauerlein also echoes
English at Emory University and is a
                                            Carr by citing a study of online
former director of research and anal-
                                            reading habits which has discov-
ysis at the National Endowment for
                                            ered something called the "F-Shaped
the Arts, is not always sure just how
                                            Pattern for Reading Web Content."
much a matter of mirth "the dumb-
                                            This is the technique of reading
est generation" is, or isn't. After all,
                                            horizontally across the first few lines
it is not really their fault if, as he
                                            of text, then halfway across for a few
says, they have been "betrayed" by
                                            more, and finally vertically the rest
the mentors who should have taught
                                            of the way down the page. There
them better. Yet he seems to agree
                                            can be few of us who do not feel a
with Nicholas Carr that what we are
                                            twinge of guilty recognition at this
witnessing is not just an educational
                                            description. Busted! Even those who
breakdown but a deformation of the
                                            have come to the Web late in life
very idea of intelligence.
                                            are not so very different, then, from
   This, in his view, is at least part of
                                            the fifth-graders who, as an elemen-
what is responsible for the so-called
                                            tary school principal told Bauerlein,
"Flynn Effect," whereby the aggre-
                                            proceed as follows when they are
gate of human intelligence appears to       assigned a research project: "go to
increase with each generation.              Google, type keywords, download
  The more tests emphasize                  three relevant sites, cut and paste
  "learned content" such as vocabu-         passages into a new document, add
  lary, math techniques, and cultur-        transitions of their own, print it up,
  al knowledge, the less the Flynn          and turn it in."



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                         Is Stupid Making Us Google?


  As The Dumbest Generation right-          pattern-recognition skills fostered by
ly notes, "the model is information         hours at the computer screen. That
retrieval, not knowledge formation,         will doubtless be just the first step
and the material passes from Web to         in a series of dumbings-down that
homework paper without lodging in           will follow our youthful cybernauts
the minds of the students." Generally       all the way through high school, col-
speaking, even those who are most           lege, and graduate school until, in
gung-ho about new ways of learning          the future, everybody will come out
probably tend to cling to a belief that     at the end of the educational pro-
education has, or ought to have, at least   cess with a Ph.D. in googling. Why
something to do with making things          should we necessarily suppose that
lodge in the minds of students--this        they need anything more?
even though the disparagement of
the role of memory in education by
professional educators now goes back
at least three generations, long before
                                            I  ndeed, there are those--such as
                                               Larissa MacFarquhar, whose 1997
                                            essay in Slate, "Who Cares If Johnny
computers were ever thought of as           Can't Read? The value of books is
educational tools. That, by the way,        overstated," is cited by Professor
should lessen our astonishment, if          Bauerlein--who think (or pretend
not our dismay, at the extent to which      to think) that the alarmists are
the educational establishment, instead      guilty of "the sentimentalization of
of viewing these developments with          books." He also quotes a professor of
alarm, is adapting its understand-          Renaissance literature who once told
ing of what education is to the new         him: "Look, I don't care if everybody
realities of how the new generation         stops reading literature. . . . Yeah, it's
of "netizens" actually learn (and don't     my bread and butter, but cultures
learn) rather than trying to adapt          change. People do different things."
the kids to unchanging standards of         He is appropriately outraged at such
scholarship and learning.                   unashamed philistinism:
  Obviously, as all we inveterate
googlers already know, it's much eas-         What to say about a hyperedu-
                                              cated, highly paid teacher, a stew-
ier that way. So what if the kids aren't
                                              ard of literary tradition entrusted
reading properly (by their grandpar-
                                              to impart the value of literature
ents' lights) or learning the more            to students, who shows so lit-
difficult skills of logic and analysis        tle regard for her field? I can't
that come from that kind of reading?          imagine a mathematician saying
The answer is to downgrade verbal             the same thing about math, or a
and numerical abilities to "lower-            biologist about biology, yet, sad
order skills" in comparison with the          to say, scholars, journalists, and
spatial, information-gathering, and           other guardians of culture accept



                                                                 Summer 2008 ~ 77

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                                  James Bowman


  the deterioration of their province      have denounced the very idea of
  without much regret.                     mentorship in anything but the tools
                                           of deconstruction which allow them
  All the same, it does seem pass-         to set themselves up as superior
ing strange that he regards this as        to--rather than the humble acolytes
a matter of neglect or inadvertence        of--the culture they study. So far
and has not noticed that professors        from being invited to contemplate
of arts, languages, and humanities         "the best that has been said and
stopped being, or even wanting to          thought in the world," knowledge of
be, "guardians of culture" a long time     which is what that Victorian patri-
ago. Their grand refus in rejecting        archal apologist, Matthew Arnold,
that traditional role had nothing to       once called culture, students today
do with the advent of computers.           are taught to sneer at its implicit
  What it did have to do with is           racism, sexism, and so on. They
of course politics, and Bauerlein's        learn about the past only to confirm
book--perhaps for diplomatic rea-          their natural contempt for it. Like
sons and to avoid being pigeonholed        redefining education as the acquisi-
as "right wing"--has too little to say     tion of information-retrieval skills,
about this. Literature is, so far from     this is to go with the flow of youth
being the property of "guardians of        culture, which begins by throwing
culture," now that of the politically      off the yoke of the past and reject-
motivated despoilers of traditional        ing the sort of self-denial necessary
culture. Most of his fellow profes-        to acquire the more difficult sort of
sors have no interest in the "great"       educational accomplishments.
works of the Western tradition--             Is Professor Bauerlein being disin-
indeed, they reject the very idea          genuous, then, when he asks: "If 81
of "greatness"--except to "decon-          percent of freshmen in '03 read four
struct" it, along with the works to        books or fewer in a full year's time
which it has been attributed, show-        and seniors lowered that dreary fig-
ing how their unexamined political         ure to only 74 percent, one wonders
assumptions have tended to rein-           why college courses didn't inspire
force the patriarchal, imperialist, rac-   them to pick up books at a faster
ist, and homophobic foundation on          rate"? He must know that that's sim-
which traditional societies have been      ply not what most college courses are
built. Only now, in the work of our        meant to do any more. If our young
most advanced theorists, have these        people are toiling their way through
assumptions finally been brought to        their educational careers while read-
light and exposed for what they are.       ing less than ever before for their
  In other words, the "mentors" have       own pleasure or enlightenment, why
not only betrayed their pupils, they       be surprised? No one has ever taught



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                         Is Stupid Making Us Google?


them that books can be read for plea-      Xbox added to Tupac and Britney,
sure or enlightenment--or for any          Titanic and Idol."
other purpose than to be exposed as           True enough, "there is no better
the coded rationalization for the ille-    reprieve from the bombardment than
gitimate powers of the ruling classes      reading a book," though Bauerlein
that they really are. Why would you        unfortunately doesn't differentiate
willingly read a single line of litera-    between books of "popular literature"
ture if that is all you supposed it to     and "the classics." It may be that
consist of ?                               "books afford young readers a place
                                           to slow down and reflect, to find

I  t is, therefore, no accident that
   young people are being cut off
from tradition, as Bauerlein laments
                                           role models, to observe their own
                                           turbulent feelings well expressed, or
                                           to discover moral convictions miss-
that they are. The bad habits engen-       ing from their real situations," but
dered by an over-reliance on comput-       what makes him think that most kids
ers and Internet search engines may        want to do any of these things? And
be another matter, but it is hard to       if they don't, are they to be forced?
regard it as merely coincidental if we     How does he propose that their con-
find that American education is being      sumption of junk culture of the sort
hollowed out from within by social         mentioned here should be curtailed
and cultural forces that appear to         in order that they should spend more
many to be benign or harmless--or,         time with books? In other words,
in some cases, actually philo-educa-       isn't this a problem of discipline?
tional. Surely he is right to stress the   And where there is no discipline, how
importance among these forces of an        does he propose to introduce it?
unthinking technophilia of the kind           "Young people," he rightly notes,
that leads Steven Johnson, author of       "need mentors not to go with the
the 2005 book provocatively titled         youth flow, but to stand staunchly
Everything Bad is Good for You, to an      against it, to represent something
uncritical admiration of the amuse-        smarter and finer than the cacoph-
ments of the information age. But          ony of social life." He's also right
while Bauerlein takes Johnson to           that they need more time away from
task on several points, he seems to        the computer in order to acquire the
suggest that all our educators have        skills of "deep reading" recommend-
to do is expose their charges to some      ed by Nicholas Carr. But they are not
superior alternative to "the ordi-         likely to get either one so long as so
nary stuff of youth culture"--that is,     many educators cling as they do now
"puerile dramas, verbal clichés, and       to the axiomatic belief not just that
screen psychodelia," not to mention        "learning can be fun" but that it must
"MySpace, YouTube, teen blogs, and         be fun, and the equally axiomatic



                                                                Summer 2008 ~ 79

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                                  James Bowman


rejection of that which may cause          history. That is a very big subject,
pain and humiliation, even if these        and this is not a very big book. Yet
are productive of real learning. This      what it does do it does well, which
is the real threat to the transmission     is to serve as an essential if diffi-
of culture between the generations.        cult and depressing guide through
Professor Bauerlein seems at times         the increasing profusion of survey
to recognize this but fails to empha-      data which suggest an affirmative
size it enough, or to relate it to the     answer to the question of Nicholas
self-esteem movement, which has its        Carr's title in The Atlantic, "Is Google
own reasons for promoting the idea         Making Us Stupid?"--and to show
of painless learning.                      that it is our children and grand-
  Likewise, although he sees and           children who are preceding us in
spends quite a lot of time on the den-     stupidity. But once that process is
igration of tradition, he doesn't see      complete, presumably we won't care
that it is part of a larger ahistoricism   any more that culture and tradition
that not only denies the relevance         are not being transmitted to the next
of the past but, effectively, teaches      generation.
that the past never existed except
as an imperfect version of the pres-       James Bowman, resident scholar at the
ent. What Herbert Butterfield called       Ethics and Public Policy Center, is the
"the Whig interpretation of history,"      author, most recently, of Media Madness:
taken to its extreme, is now revealed      The Corruption of Our Political
as what it always was: a denial of         Culture (Encounter Books, 2008).




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