Letters to the Editor
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Interwebz! O noes!
I love articles like this because they basically reaffirm my world view -- internet = good, old fuddy-duddies = bad.
And I do agree with the basic premise that oftentimes the 'older' generation is guilty of quite a bit of hand wringing about the declining values of the younger generations (be they academic, moral, or social), when really there is nothing wrong with the new generation.
So as a card-carrying member of the Next Generation, I really wanted to agree that old people just don’t GET young people, and that we really are just as smart if not SMARTER than our parents.
But... 1 in 4 people didn't know who Adolf Hitler was? That is just. so. weak.
The problem isn't the internet. The problem is that since ye olde baby boomers, the education system has gone through quite a revolution. Instead of teaching kids to memorize facts or learn about events of historical significance, we went all postmodern and started teaching kids how to research, and got them looking at a single event in great detail.
Its good to teach kids how to research. This is why we're all so damn websavvy. Why bother memorizing something when you can just google it, or find it on wikipedia? Except, what my generation lost (to its detriment) was an understanding of what sort of things were important to look up in the first place. If you've never heard of Hitler, you're not going to be doing a wiki search about him, are you? Its a whole world of information you aren't exposed to.
Arguably for many teens, Hitler and the Holocaust are less immediately relevant than the contents of last night's episode of Lost. In the Long Term, WWII is clearly more important, but in the short term, Lost is. Kids are living in the short term. We haven't taught them why or how to live in the long term. Thats our failing, not theirs. And I hate to say it, but the internet doesn't help teach kids how to think long term. If anything, it makes 'flash in the pan' news and events even more powerful.