But, to my welcomed surprise, it was the exact opposite. Instead, it went into great detail about the long history of Americans being worried that we, as a whole, have the dumbest kids in the world. And this collective panic usually manifests itself in the constant berating of the younger generation for not knowing enough instead of the previous generations for not . . . teaching them enough. But, of course, asking people to criticize themselves instead of others would simply be too much.
The essay actually hits many different points that are often brought up in regards to education. The one that stood out the most to me in the first chapter was the topic of Japan and how their “students usually outperform those in the U.S. in international comparisons” (Best 3). It’s always confused me as to why whenever people talk about how “kids these days” are getting progressively dumber they always bring up other countries like Japan. As far as I can tell, we’ve never been intellectually or technologically more advanced than Japan, in fact, not many countries can say they have either. So why exactly is the expectation to be better than our educators and the majority of the world at such a young age placed on us? The world may never know.
I can understand having concerns about your child being an intelligent, critical thinker in the world, but this obsession with always being first in this never-ending (non-existent) “smarty-pants” race is beyond me. America, in general, has always been known for our big guns, not our big brains. And if that weren’t the case then maybe we wouldn’t have created the need for our big guns in the first place. But I digress as that’s a topic for another passive-aggressive rant.
Out of all the points that the author made, the one that I agreed with the most was when he spoke about the “complex technological devices” that we’re surrounded with nowadays (Best 33). With every major advancement in the technology world, it’s usually been the younger generations that learn the ins and outs the quickest. Meanwhile, we still have to teach our grandparents how to use every new device they purchase. For some, this would be seen as a sign of our mental capabilities. For others, the fact that we’re able to adapt and grow with the times is nothing compared to the fact that most of us don’t know how to change a tire without google.
I guess what it really comes down to is the ever-changing beliefs and values that each generation holds. It’s never the same, therefore, it only makes sense that the things that each generation deems important changes as well. Our predecessors had to worry about being drafted and figuring out what the Russians were doing on the other side of the world. But my generation mostly cares about trying to find a job in the failing economy that our parents and grandparents ruined while simultaneously killing the earth just to hand it down to us: their children. But their concern about the fact that we didn’t retain any information from our freshman geometry class (information that they probably didn’t retain either) is very valid and completely relevant to my fast-approaching adulthood.
