A very disturbing (at least to me) article on the state of higher education:

To be sure, the current crop of students is the most educated and affluent ever. Their enrollment rates in college surpass those of their baby-boomer parents and Generation X, and their purchasing power is so strong that it dominates the retail and entertainment sectors. Credit-card debt for 18-to-24-year-olds doubled from $1,500 in 1992 to $3,000 in 2001, much of it due to the new array of tools, such as BlackBerries, that keep them up to date with contemporaries and youth culture. Students have grown up in a society of increasing prosperity and education levels, and technology outfits them with instant access to news, music, sports, fashion, and one another. Their parents' experience — LP records, typewriters, the cold war — seems a far-gone reality. As drivers of consumer culture, mirrored constantly by mass entertainment, young adults understandably heed one another and ignore their seniors — including professors.

But what do they know? What have they learned from their classes and their privilege?

We can be certain that they have mastered the fare that fills their five hours per day with screens — TV, DVD, video games, computers for fun — leaving young adults with extraordinarily precise knowledge of popular music, celebrities, sports, and fashion. But when it comes to the traditional subjects of liberal education, the young mind goes nearly blank. In the last few years, an accumulation of survey research on civics, history, literature, the fine arts, geography, and politics reveals one dismal finding after another. The surveys vary in sample size and question design, and they tend to focus on basic facts, but they consistently draw the same general inference: Young people are cut off from the worlds beyond their social circuit.

Sadly, the generation that treats Jon Steward as the sixties generation did Walter Cronkite vote, despite their profound ignorance. Fortunately, many of them don't.

It's worse than that. There's a myth going around college teaching workshops that the "current crop of students" is more technologically savvy and "computer literate" than us old faculty farts--"Why, they can even program a VCR!"

The reality is that beyond Google, Napster, IM, chat rooms, and maybe PowerPoint, they're pretty much helpless. Worse yet, many seem to have only Cargo Cult computer skills; they randomly bang on an unfamiliar application, then complain helplessly that "it doesn't work."

Worse yet, many seem to have only Cargo Cult computer skills; they randomly bang on an unfamiliar application, then complain helplessly that "it doesn't work."

Perhaps the same percentage of people have always had that relationship with technology (how many people drive yet are unfamiliar with the basics of how the car works or fixing common problems) but you see more Cargo Cult-ish behaivor; there is simply more tech around to be mystified at than before.

As a young adult who does know most of these facts like these surveys test, I have to say I understand how little people care about facts these days. If I want to know just about anything, I can find out using Google and other web resources in less than half a minute. Why take the trouble to remember it for "instant recall"?

It's not about "instant recall." It's about integration, and developing an interconnected world view. If you don't have the basics of our history, it makes it hard to draw lessons from it, or to apply it to new circumstances as you encounter them.

We're aren't talking about the kind of "facts," such as what specific date such and such an event occurred. That is exactly the kind of thing you can (and should, rather than using up valuable neurons for it) look up on Google. But if you don't know that James Madison is the father of the Constitution, that's just the very beginning of the things you don't know about the Constitution, and that's frightening.

Yes, indeed. In a world where power is derived from the superior use of information, ignorance is especially dangerous.

But, we can all rest easy with the knowledge that fat, pimply-faced geeks are toiling away in front of computer screens all across the world learning how to hijack cars, outrun police, and otherwise kill and destroy while listening to the prepubescent sexual rants of fake musicians on iPods.

I'm not sure what's worse, folks who deal better with machines than fellow humans or religious zealots unable to shed the ways of the Dark Ages.

Fear the future. The meek appear to be inheriting the Earth...

>>If I want to know just about anything, I can find out using Google and other web resources in less than half a minute. Why take the trouble to remember it for "instant recall"?

I believe that Einstein had a similar perspective on this issue.

I think every generation grumps about this sort of thing. A friend told me once that when he was a boy his IP address was six.

I must have missed out on the gadgets. I graduated in 94, then med school in 97, and residency in 2003. So, maybe I was too busy missing out on, you know, my twenties to get any cool gadgets.

But if you take my iPod I'm gonna have a hard time avoiding coming after you with a scalpel.

Worse yet, many seem to have only Cargo Cult computer skills; they randomly bang on an unfamiliar application, then complain helplessly that "it doesn't work."

I've had the same, frustrating, experience with my own son but, frankly, I had chalked it up to the tendency towards the median. I've always been the classic geek who could understand machines by (seemingly) just picking them up - but other than a good understanding of systems of video game logic, he's as helpless as my mother when it comes to computers.

The problem, in a democracy, is that these know-nothings are given the right to make decisions that affect the entire nation. Outside of elections, politicians pay attention to the results of polls, and the polls are reporting the opinions of people who don't know the first thing about the issues on which they are giving their opinions. So both directly and indirectly, the course of the nation is being set by idiots.

Only 13% can locate Iraq on a map, and yet seeing where Iraq is might give people a clue as to exactly why we have 138,000 soldiers there at the moment. Of course, it also helps to know something of WWII history, which they also don't know. And knowing the history of Western Civ back to and including the Crusades would help in understanding the basis of the war we are engaged in right now.

They know none of this, and yet their decisions on matters of life and death, war and peace, count. They might as well use a dart board, or close their eyes and go "eenie meenie miney moe", and bind us all to the results.

It is being reported that Jon Stewart (not Steward) will be the Oscars host. Which may be appropriate (for different reasons) regardless of your political leanings.

Rand is timely, as always.

Like Rand this article is, like, to, like well, hard on these kids. It's not, like their, like, fault. Like how would you, and like, your generation like it, like, if they, like, busted you old dudes on their, like, blogs??

The real, like, problem is a lack of, like, work ethic and, like, an expectation of, like, everything being like handed to them.

And, like, who is this Cronkite dude? Like, was he the drummer for some, like, acid rock band?

When our schools, elementary, junior or middle, high, and college allow the preceding speech pattern to continue we are in trouble. It shows how uninterested they are in teaching what they should. And God forbid they crush little Johnnie's / Janie's self-esteem by correcting this aberration of our language. (Sister Mary Michael would have tanned my palm!!)

This is ultimately daddy’s and mommy’s fault, they don't want their kids corrected, and they accept sub-standard education, hang the cost.

I recently attended an assembly at my grandson's school, my satirical tirade above would have gone right past one of the teachers to whom I spoke. This was how she, (like) talked.

If the teachers don't know the difference in their own good or bad education, how then can the kids be educated?

Isn't a distrust of the uneducated masses one of the reasons for our electoral college? What was the distractor back in the early 1780's? Certainly not iPods. It seems we will always be faced with a large segment of the apathetic and relatively uneducated public. We've gotten along reasonably well thus far, so other than continuing to lament the failings of the next generation (an activity I am convinced is honorably passed along from generation to generation) this is probably much to do about nothing.

OK, all you history buffs, please weigh in on my obvious misinterpretation of history.

>>If I want to know just about anything, I can find out using Google and other web resources in less than half a minute. Why take the trouble to remember it for "instant recall"?

If you don't have a basic understanding of things, then you don't have a good bullsh*t filter. Google can return thousands, even millions of hits on a search (especially if you don't understand how to structure a Boolean search). A significant percentage of the hits will be crap. Knowledge helps filter out the crap.

It's like the student who is math challenged but thinks he knows how to use a calculator. Without the ability to mentally estimate what the answer should be, you're more likely to just accept the calculator results even when you hit the wrong key. Mental estimation helps raise the "What the?! That can't be right" alert and prompt you to repeat the calculation.

I edit theses, papers, proposals and the like for undergraduates,post-graduates and professionals as a side-line business. The grasp of recent history, government, politics is incredible, not to mention the outright rejection of cultural or literary antecedents. The ability to critically assess published material and to develop cogent arguments is almost non-existent. Most of the material I read (even from college level teachers) is predicated upon an assumption of rampant racial, gennder and sexual orientation prejudice. Appearently it is widely held that the poor retention of students in college-level science programs is due to the the stubborn resistence of scientist to teach classes that accomodate multiple learning styles. But let's not speculate on students inability to focuss, to surmount persnoal barriers or to take responsibility for their absymal high school preparation.

Can you imagine widespread use of entrance examinations in the next few decades?

As long as they have their consciousness raised, and care deeply about social justice, nothing else matters. Oh, it matters if they're white males, in that case they really need to do something like be gay, or claim native american heritage or something, but otherwise nothing else matters.

Lets just appoint IMG as absolute dictator and take away everyone's right to voice their opinion. I'm sure that would lead to instant progress!

"Lets just appoint IMG as absolute dictator and take away everyone's right to voice their opinion. I'm sure that would lead to instant progress!"

Who's IMG?