Generations, Learning, and Google

“Young people,” he rightly notes, “need mentors not to go with the youth flow, but to stand staunchly against it, to represent something smarter and finer than the cacophony of social life.” He’s also right that they need more time away from the computer in order to acquire the skills of “deep reading” recommended by Nicholas Carr. But they are not likely to get either one so long as so many educators cling as they do now to the axiomatic belief not just that “learning can be fun” but that it must be fun, and the equally axiomatic rejection of that which may cause pain and humiliation, even if these are productive of real learning. This is the real threat to the transmission of culture between the generations. Professor Bauerlein seems at times to recognize this but fails to emphasize it enough, or to relate it to the self-esteem movement, which has its own reasons for promoting the idea of painless learning.


ETA: Here is the article in the Atlantic Monthly to which he refers.