In French-Canadian filmmaker Denys Arcand’s 1986 movie Le Déclin de l’Empire Américain (The Decline of the American Empire), a professor observes that throughout history the decline of an empire is always preceded by its citizenry’s preoccupation with self-gratification. Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein makes a similar argument in his new book, The Dumbest Generation (Tarcher, $24.95). He feels that the millennial generation places an extraordinary emphasis on personal happiness and, thanks to the technological advancements of the day, enjoys unprecedented peer contact and access to entertainment. “Instead of opening young American minds to the stores of civilization and science and politics, technology has contracted their horizon to themselves, to the social scene around them,” Bauerlein writes. As a result, the millennials are at risk of losing the “great American heritage, forever.”
Bauerlein opens with a chapter on the millennial generation’s “knowledge deficits,” as evidenced by test results and survey data. In 2005, 46 percent of high school seniors scored “below basic” on a National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science exam. A year later, 53 percent of high school seniors scored “below basic” on an NAEP history test. When, in 2003, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education tested college students on their knowledge of the First Amendment, “only one in 50…named the first right guaranteed in the amendment.”
