I'm trying to stay calm here. Any mention of Mark Bauerlein, especially where he is cited as gospel, and I quickly begin to see red. Yes, I see our literacy percentages going down. I could give you that spiel the difference between correlation and causation, how statistics are extrapolations and interpretations of fact rather than facts themselves (unless you personally poll every person in America with completely objective criteria and managed to do so without bias, but good luck with that.) But you know what? I'll concede that my generational cohort is pretty dumb. I want to strangle the fucker wearing his illiteracy as a badge of pride just as much as any of you. I guess what it comes down to is that I really do not buy the implication that previous generations were any smarter. Morecowbell and Beefyphil had a string of very good posts to this effect a few pages ago. I do not argue that analytical skills and critical thought require literacy, but mere literacy does not guarantee those skills. Ok, so more individuals in the previous generation were literate, but were those literate individuals any more well read? Maybe all they read were Archie comics. Now I'm not citing him as gospel, but I value the opinion of this particular blogger, and this is what The Last Psychiatrist has to say on the subject: The Dumbest Generation is Only the Second Dumbest Generation But I am biased. If thats going to make you discount my opinions go ahead, but it's hard not to get a little pissed off looking forward to graduating into this job market and hearing our 'elders' tell us, "Yeah we fucked this entire country up. But we are so, so much smarter than you."
What? That makes no sense. I can't think of a reason ANYONE reads other than to gain information or for pleasure. It has nothing to do with 'high brow literature.' I certainly don't mean to elevate one guy's opinion to the heights of The Truth. His book, The Dumbest Generation, is simply an interesting read and a refreshing voice amongst all the people who clamor about how highly read this generation is. And if we're talking about causality, well, that's another thread altogether. I merely pointed out some statistics that show that amongst younger people reading books is plummeting. I will say - and this is only my own opinion - that the ability to effectively communicate via the written word is dropping at an alarming rate. Some of my friends have kids who are in their tweens and teens, and when I read their facebook updates I shudder at the appalling shorthand and the inability to spell. Even amongst older people the emails they churn out are at times embarrassing. "Your" is not the same as "you're", "Two, too and to" have different contexts and meanings, etc. What is responsible for this? Especially, as many sources claim, you can "just hit spellcheck?" Peronally, I think a lack of exposure to properly constructed sentences contributes mightily. Call me old and grumpy, but I think the fact that people text and post responses on Youtube to their favourite videos should not be counted as "this generation reads more than ever before."
I don't believe anyone in this topic made that argument. With all due respect to them, MoreCowbell and BeefyPhil were arguing that current literacy rates were better than ever until myself and especially Dcc01 cited some statistics proving the exact opposite. They're just as ideologically driven as the alarmists. Anyways, since you raised the question, I do believe that people, on average, were more EDUCATED back in the 10s to 50s. There are a few things that indicate this to me; 1. Comparing similar level physics and mathematics classes at my university now versus the 50s and 60s. Looking at the problems back then compared to the ones today. It was much harder some 50 years ago. 2. I once came upon a book at the souvenir shop. It was entitled "Mathematical problems for Naval Officers, 1901". Back then, there was no radar, so they had to possess solid mathematical backgrounds to figure out their coordinates, and navigate the ship. I looked at the math problems. They were hard as fuck; extremely difficult. Assuming that a run-of-the-mill officer could even solve half of them, they would have far better problem-solving skills than the vast majority of present day math grad students. 3. Look at popular culture at the time. Films were way more dialogue-intensive, and possessed more complicated, sophisticated sentence structure and vocabulary. I think people are probably better educated now than they were in the 19th century, and there has been no significant change either way in the last 15-20 years, but going back to the first half of the 20th century, people were far better educated. I believe there are some interesting reasons for why people are worse educated, mostly having to do with industry, military, and the government no longer needing to have quality public schools.
I argued what now? And you did what? You have this annoying habit of ascribing arguments to people that they never made. Find the place where I said that. No, really. I'll wait.
My problem is this: Back in the day, popular culture reading for bored wives was Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence. It is a rich book that poses questions about the nature of happiness and duty. Today, popular culture reading for bored wives is Twilight. If there is one question this book makes you ask, it's "why the fuck did I just read this book?"
You're absolutely correct; neither you nor Beefy Phil made that argument. It was actually "SuperFantastic" who did. My mistake.
I consider the books on my bookshelf to be some of my most prized possessions. I mostly read non-fiction books because I want to know more about this world, and not some made-up world (but I still love Harry Potter). They have made me into the person I am today, the different ideas I have been exposed to have literally changed my life for the better. A lot of those book recommendations have come from the RMMB, so kudos to everyone for that. In my circle of friends, I am the one who reads the most. We are all pretty smart, college-educated young adults. Unfortunately I don't see many of them reading much at all. I don't know why that is. From my personal experience, I would say video games, the Internet, and TV shows all take away from actually book reading time. I couldn't even convince a poker geek friend of mine to read Bringing Down the House. To each their own, I guess. I will have to start asking more of my friends "Have you read any good books lately?"
I haven't had a chance to read through the whole thread, but I wholeheartedly agree that people who celebrate their stupidity are a waste of oxygen and carbon. The thing that really messes with my head is how proud of it some people seem. After a certain point it almost becomes a self fulfilling attitude, since, at least for me, I find it harder to read after I haven't read a book for a while. Once I get a book or two read in pretty quick succession, I seem to find my groove. What does the idiot board think about reading alot of online content, since it's "bite-sized" enough that I can read a couple short articles between classes, as opposed to reading books? I'd say my online reading:real book reading ratio is fairly high, and I'd be very interested in what ratios other people seem to have. Obviously theres a difference between reading every single FML and reading articles where you gleam real world knowledge or current events awareness, but I tend to lean more heavily on the informative and educational side.
I tend to think of reading in 2 different ways... the "let's get more information or explore new ideas" kind of thing, which is very well suited for the internet and little byte-sized packets, and then there's the more lengthy "let's go exercise our imagination" with some solid fictional/SF/Fantasy type reading. (I'm ignoring the investigative, learn new tech shit to solve a problem at work stuff). Each has it's place. I'm always doing the first bit, all day, every day, and I think that is very much the norm for the typical person that is online. It's the second type that I think is missing, and should be done more by people.
I can agree with that separation of reading types, but I do feel like you're giving the internet as a whole a little bit too much credit. While I agree that many of the people on this board are probably closer to your assumption, I'd be willing to bet some money that for alot of people, their computer is their laughter, porn, and movie machine, (oh and it occasionally gets messages from people I know too!) and as such, wouldn't be surprised to learn that the majority of "learning and exploring" that average joe internet does pertains more to new sources of (mostly meaningless) content to consume, and googling new pictures of lolcats. I say this because I'm at a pretty good public university, which by all means should be filled with people thirsting for new knowledge (if not in their classes or major, at least something that interests them), and while there are certainly smart people here, it would surprise me if many of my classmates ever consume the internet in a way that makes them smarter, or exercises the logic processing centers in their brains. But hey, maybe I'm just cynical...
I thought about this more, and I'm not sure these statistics quite support the hypothesis in question. Or at least not as strongly as they appear to at first glance. Looking at that table, "young people read less" is not the whole story. But what they say is possibly equally bad. Maybe worse. Looking at "generations" isn't the only way to read these numbers. It should also tell us about the same age bracket, but surveyed at different points in time. The 65-74 year olds of 2002 were 45-54 in 1982. Likewise for the other age groups, with the caveat that the 35-44 year olds were 15-24, not 18-24. So you should be able to track the reading habits of same people at different times by comparing the different studies. So if we look at the same cohorts over time, what do we see? Between 1982 and 1992, every cohort of people read less. The decrease is 2-5.2%, with larger decreases in the younger groups. This means that the 30 year old in 1992 not only reads less than a 30 year old in 1982, but he also reads less than he did in 1982, when he was 20 years old. You see the same pattern from 1992 to 2002, with cohort-linked decreases of 5.6-8%. Intriguingly, the youngest cohort had the smallest drop. What do these tell us? Yes, younger people read less. But it's not entirely a generational thing. The three surveys show same-cohort drops of 13.2, 10.5, and 10.8%. Another interesting fact is that even the most prolific readers are reading less. Look at 1982. Who read the most? 25-34 year olds. 1992? 35-44 year olds. 2002? 45-54 year olds. Given the ten year gaps.....these are the same people. And even they read 10.5% less. Yes, young people read less. This is true. But a large part of that is not a "generational" issue. It's an "everybody" issue. It's less a "kids these days" thing than a "the whole world these days" problem. The effect is just amplified in younger generations. Also, printed word does not equal books. The survey says printed word, which includes periodicals such as newspapers and magazines. The value of books, in my opinion, is unlikely to be replaced by resources online. Or at least not fully. There's a lot of value to long-form literature, and that is not something the web does particularly well. However, much of the periodical reading done in print form is easily replaceable, and even improved, by online content. Especially since most printed material is available online. If someone puts down Newsweek and instead fires up a web browser, there's a good argument to be had that there might be a net gain. So if the "loss of the printed word" is partially due to the lower subscription numbers to newspapers and magazines....I'm ok with that.
Here's the Philalawyer piece I mentioned in my first post: <a class="postlink" href="http://philalawyer.net/2009/11/the-internet-isnt-killing-books-in-reality-its-probably-going-to-create-a-huge-new-market-for-them/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://philalawyer.net/2009/11/the-inte ... -for-them/</a> I didn't paraphrase it accurately, but this is the part I was thinking about: And KIMaster, the more I read your link about how reading has increased among young people since 2002, the more I think computers may actually be helping. I know you were comparing it to the dropping rates in previous decades, but how many of those people had blogs? Not sure if this is a proper syllogism, but it seems to me that: computers require reading and writing (almost exclusively); more and more people are getting computers; therefore, more people will be reading and writing, more often. Couldn't the sharp increase since 2002 be a sign of a long-lasting trend?
The study didn't measure reading in general; it only looked at pleasure reading of books among the 18-24 year old demographic. While it's definitely true that books are easier to access and read on a computer than ever, (I read the vast majority of literature that way) I'm guessing that extremely few people do that. The sole/primary reason behind the increase in pleasure reading has to do with the Harry Potter and Twilight series, and most of their sales occurred after the release of the movies.
Personally my time is divided almost equally between reading things for the pleasure of reading, reading for class, and online articles. For personal books alone, I probably go through about 20-50 a year depending on my school load. When I wasn't going to school I was averaging about 2 books a week. Currently I'm rereading a Picture of Dorian Gray and Crime and Punishment. Regarding my many interests, I just finished reading a gardening book which led me to read further articles online on the study of insects (studying the pests in my garden), aquaponics (raising fish with my plants and being self sufficient), chemistry and soil testing (studying the ph and physical makeup of the soil), studying how to breed praying mantids (biology and climate) which in turn is leading me to order an assload of books to read. The point is the vast majority of people don't give a fuck and it has always been so despite having access to unlimited knowledge.
Name me 5 films with "complicated, sophisticated sentence structure" that were made from 1910-1950 and I can name you 10 that were made in the last 20 years. Citing that as an example of where our current culture is lacking in intelligence doesn't work.
Correlation does not equal causation. The fact that they read more, and that their films lacked velociraptors piloting spaceships into battle, is less a causal link, and more just because they lacked the necessary technology. The trend of the films has less to do with the audience, and more to do with the limitations on filmmaking at the time. Trust me, if they could have made Jurassic Park in 1930, they would have. Because fucking everyone loves dinosaurs.
They kind of did, 1933's King Kong. Both were equally technologically groundbreaking; however in terms of narrative King Kong was far superior and doesn't rely on the technology alone. I actually don't necessarily agree with KIMasters comment; however I just think this particular point was somewhat flawed.
....which was massively successful and popular. While it would later be defeated, it broke all box office records at the time of its release. When they put out a movie with great special effects, it was very popular.
My point was more that even when a movie was special effect heavy it still contained solid dialogue and story. It wasn't a trade off between the two which it seems to be now.