{"id":363,"date":"2010-09-28T09:14:46","date_gmt":"2010-09-28T14:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2010\/09\/28\/100928_nincompoopgeneration\/"},"modified":"2022-03-18T14:34:43","modified_gmt":"2022-03-18T19:34:43","slug":"100928_nincompoopgeneration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2010\/09\/28\/100928_nincompoopgeneration\/","title":{"rendered":"“Nincompoop generation?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Associated Press<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Second-graders who can’t tie shoes or zip jackets. Four-year-olds in Pull-Ups diapers. Five-year-olds in strollers. Teens and preteens befuddled by can openers and ice-cube trays. College kids who’ve never done laundry, taken a bus alone or addressed an envelope.<\/p>\n

Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? And do we have only ourselves to blame? Or are some of these things simply the result of kids growing up with push-button technology in an era when mechanical devices are gradually being replaced by electronics?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

From my perspective, the answers are: possibly, probably, partially. The more complicated answer is that we no longer seem to be teaching kids to think critically. Further, to the extent that such a thing can be taught, we’ve failed to teach children the joy of learning new things just for the sake of knowing them.<\/p>\n

I’m increasingly convinced that the learning process<\/i> is at least as important as the thing that’s learned. We were discussing the other evening the many “useless” things we learned in high school and college: quadratic equations, queuing theory, organic chemistry, how to use carbon paper. With an infinitesimally small number of exceptions, none of these things are important to our careers or everyday lives, and we all knew that even as we were going to class, so why bother?<\/p>\n

I think the value was in the mental processes needed to figure out those various things. We were challenged to solve problems that seemed well beyond our grasp, and regardless of whether we mastered the arcane knowledge, our minds were improved by the attempts.<\/p>\n

I fear that nowadays, when so many teachers are required to gear their instruction to standardized testing, memorization has been substituted for thinking. Life is not a multiple choice test, it’s an essay exam that we’re constantly writing. Or at least it should be. My fear is that for many in the upcoming generations, it’s just a series of sound bites and text messages, and that we’re eventually going to pay dearly for the mental laziness that we’ve given our children permission to adopt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Associated Press: Second-graders who can’t tie shoes or zip jackets. Four-year-olds in Pull-Ups diapers. Five-year-olds in strollers. Teens and preteens befuddled by can openers and ice-cube trays. College kids who’ve never done laundry, taken a bus alone or addressed an envelope. Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? And do we have only… Continue reading “Nincompoop generation?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thinking-allowed","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9062,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions\/9062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}