Monday.....Miscellaneous.....Thoughts of a Ploughboy

I just finished reading an interesting book that I recommend, particularly to those with young children. The book is Mark Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation, How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. I want to give one blurb also, from Harold Bloom, An urgent and pragmatic book on the very dark topic of the virtual end of reading among the young. Summarizing the book at the beginning, Mr. Bauerlein writes Most young Americans possess little of the knowledge that makes for an informed citizen, and too few of them master the skills needed to negotiate an information-heavy, communication-based society and economy. Statistics abound throughout the book, both from those that warn that the screen time (TV, computers and other electronic screens) that American youth put in is producing a generation that will be unprepared to sustain America's intellectual future; and from the other side, those that hype these devices as beneficial to a multi-tasking society. One expert goes so far as to say The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing. So you get both opinions to consider, as vsionary rhetoric is supplied throughout as are reports from colleges and universities that more students are matriculating who are not prepared to take credit-bearing entry-level college course with a reasonable chance of succeeding in those courses. The series of topics range from science to the arts (high and low.) It should be no surprise where I stand on this for I have broached this topic before, particularly through Arthur W. Hunt's book The Vanishing Word and Neil Postman's Amusing Oursleves To Death. Some of the conclusions that the author comes to are; that we process information from computer screens differently than through books, information coming from the screen demands a fast moving-skimming of the material, and that the reading of necessary, quality literature and history that strengthens discernment of the mind , is disappearing. Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2006 was...ready for this?...You. I spent my college career enjoying the amenities that universities spend so much time supplying us with, but my second trip to the land of academia, at 50 years old, was a much more serious endeavor, and although it didn't reward me monetarily, it did give me first hand knowledge of what education is all about. So I disagree with Mr. Bauerlein on this point, the unused mind is not necessarily disabled for life. I spent my youth laughing at comedians such a Woody Allen and you may remember a scene from Sleeper when Woody wakes up in the future and stumbles upon a dust covered VW bug in a cave...and it starts right up. Even if the author's contention is sound, my advice remains don't give up...never give in...press on! The book concludes with Mark Bauerlein's commentary, extended, interesting and thought provoking, on the importance of our traditions, history and intellectual inheritance. I could not agree more. Another point that I do not concur with, and I have read this concept before in other authors, is the inference that thinking itself is the goal. I tend to lean towards the necessity of the inclusion of truth and the words of William Tyndale, martyred for translating and printing the bible in Henry VIII's England, who when confronted by the vain knowledge of a cleric who opposed him said that If God spare my life, before very long I shall cause a ploughboy to know the scriptures better than you do.