The Dumbest Generation or The Hope of Tomorrow?

Mr Mark Bauerlein calls my generation the dumbest in his book. Even though that is his opinion and his goal is to stir up a debate but i don't agree with everything Mr. Bauerlein says. Bauerlein starts out strong with two examples that left me baffled. "Two thirds of high-school seniors in 2006 couldn't explain an old photo of a sign over a theater door reading COLORED ENTRANCE." This was disturbing and I have no excuse for this. There are few if any events in American history than the Cival Rights Movement and not to remember this is just being lazy. Another painful truth is in 2001, 52 percent identified Germany, Japan or Italy, not the Soviet Union, as America's World War II ally." WW2 along with the Civil Rights have not occurred that long ago. Many peoples grandfathers were in WW2 so there is even a connection there. Where I start to disagree with Bauerlein is when he says we dont know clasical music and different art. To me just because something was deemed classical by someone of the past doesnt mean that it is important today. Saying we are the laziest also isn't a fair description. The generation before us failed us. That generation was the ones who created the technology and was in charge of our education. We were raised in a education system that was set up to fail. State mandated test were the down fall of my generation. We were tough the basic in a way that wasn't interesting to us. Books were forced onto us and told we had to do this for a test. Nothing was to be fun. We found our escapes in video games and TV. I feel that basic education students are lazy some what. While I was in high school I was apart of a graduation project with one of my teachers. Our basic goal was to set up 2 different science honor class. One class we deemed the fun class, more hands on experiments while the others was the normal basic hw, test/exams and worksheets. We found that students did well when they had fun and didn't feel like we needed to cram everything for an exam. We tested the same people with the same final exam again and the students in the fun class retained more information. When I presented my finding with 3 school staff I was asked why I felt this happened. I felt we just dump and cram, we are so worried about passing and don't really learn. When I look back at my past schooling the only things that i remember the most is when I was challenged outside the box. I feel my generation is smarter than what we are given credit for. We mastered what we were asked to do. We weren't asked to learn we were asked to perform at the highest level. We are able to get any answers we might not be able to recall faster than any other generation. We mastered the technology that we are presented with and we  use our computers like like past generation used a dictionary.

My generation has also been told you have to master one aspect and be better than anyone else to make sure you get a job. The competitive world we live in makes us pick one topic and master it and not be okay in every factor. So I do not feel that my generation is the laziest or the dumbest i feel we are a product of the system we grew up in. If anyone is dumb or lazy its the past generation that established it. 

David( The "Dumb" generation) vs Goliath(the problems from the past generations) 2011edition

As a last note this "Dumb" Generation was left having to deal with many major problems left over. We have to fix the economy, rebuild American, and fix social security. With some of these problems known I wonder why      would establishing a dumb generation be okay. My generation will solve some of these problems and I'm sure we will create a few more problems, but I feel Mr. Bauerlein doesn't want us to be content with our lives and to create and strive for more/better!