Professor Mark Bauerlein's thought-provoking new book is a follow-up to his 2008 critique of the millennial generation, which he dubbed "the dumbest generation." Back then, he was a lone voice warning that the barrage of modern technology, dumbed-down schooling, and parental indulgence were not doing these kids any favors. Now that the oldest millennials are in their upper 30s and their youngest peers are finishing college, the full impact of this social upheaval is on full display.

The author methodically shows how a combination of factors contributed to the disaster we face today with so many young adults unable to handle conflicting viewpoints or process opposing schools of thought. He shows how the millennial embrace of socialism, gender identity politics, and groups like Black Lives Matter (BLM) is actually a desire for utopia; an impossibly perfect world in which their narrow ideas and fixed opinions are never challenged. Bauerlein believes their stunted educational background prevents them from having the necessary understanding of socialism and Marxism to either embrace or reject these ideologies. In other words: "Without the background, without the ideas, our self-satisfied subversive is unwary and undiscerning..."

Bauerlein rightly blames the older generations, the baby boomers and leading-edge Gen-Xers, for the millennial debacle. He charges that society in general, as well as books like Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, published in 2000, applauded them, then "left them to their digital devices and video games and five hundred TV channels and 300 photos in their pockets, fed them diverting apps and stupid movies and crass music, and stuck them with crushing student debt and frightful healthcare costs, a coarse and vulgar public square, churches in retreat, and an economy of ‘creative destruction' and ‘disruptive innovation' (which the top ten percent exploited but the rest experienced as, precisely, destructive and disruptive)." All the while, they were given "little education in history, art, literature, philosophy, political theory, comparative religion — a cultural framework that might have helped them manage the confusion."

The author stresses that many more voices should have sounded the alarm back in 2008-2010, when the bulk of the damage was being done. He writes: "Even as the cheerleaders were hailing the advent of the digital youth, signs of intellectual harm were multiplying. Instead of heeding the signs, people in positions of authority rationalized them away."

Millennials were widely praised for their digital skills and heralded as "a new breed of worker," while at the same time they were immersed in themselves and one another on social media. "It was a disaster, and it was never going to be anything but a disaster," laments Bauerlein. "To neglect the masterpieces of art and ideas, epic events, and larger-than-life personages was to level their enjoyments to the mundane. The grim subtext was: ‘There is no tradition for you — you have no past — no greatness to revere — you're on your own.'"

The book provides a number of in-depth examples to illustrate how millennials were shortchanged in their studies at some of America's most exclusive and expensive universities, chiefly through an emphasis on critical thinking over subject matter knowledge. "Critical thinking about a subject only happens on top of thorough knowledge of that subject," Bauerlein contends.

He chronicles the protests at numerous college campuses in recent years, detailing the unreasonable student demands that were encouraged by leftist professors and which resulted in the spineless acquiescence of university presidents and administrators.

Since millennials missed out on traditional education, it's perhaps to be expected that they take a narrow, simplistic view of life, believing that "everyone deserves to be happy" regardless of their lifestyle or beliefs, and that no one has a right to object. But Bauerlein reminds us that "the historical record of utopia is poor; one collapse into failure or bloody tyranny after another, but if you regard the past as a mistake, a time of unenlightenment, you shrug."

Because every rival viewpoint and diversion of thought is seen as a threat to their utopian Eden, millennials tend to react with fury toward anyone or anything that opposes them. "Utopian justice is the harshest," Bauerlein warns, and thus many millennials are "not merely unhappy but also dangerous adults" who champion every deviant lifestyle and unfounded charge of racism.

The author places considerable emphasis on the overexposure of millennials to digital media at the expense of reading during their formative years. While he acknowledges that screens do require some reading, he believes the key to millennials' inability to recognize and value historical perspective is their overall failure to read. He cites a number of studies that reveal just how little importance they placed on reading, whether for classwork or even for pleasure. One 2010 study, for example, showed that 16 percent of millennial high school students did no leisure reading at all, while 40 percent read for an hour or less per week, and just 30 percent read from two to five hours per week. Only 14 percent said they read from six to 10 hours per week.

As for required reading, eight percent of students placed no importance on it at all and just eight percent considered it a top priority. Fully a third of the high school students polled said they considered required reading only "somewhat important."

While Bauerlein admits that "declining reading scores were a problem that extended beyond classrooms and homework time," he does not raise the subject of illiteracy among millennials. However, the failure of proper reading instruction has been a pivotal issue in education for decades. Phyllis Schlafly sounded the alarm for many years about the failure of schools to teach reading, and in response to the crisis, she created both her First Reader for young children and Turbo Reader for older students and adults.

Along with their disinterest in reading, or perhaps more accurately their inability to read well, SAT writing scores plunged as millennials grew up. In 2006, the average SAT writing score was 497. By 2016, it had fallen to 482, and declined every year except 2008 and 2013, when scores remained flat. The chart Bauerlein provides stops at 2016 because, he writes, "the SAT decided to drop the essay requirement that year," probably due to "the impact of lower scores on the brand, pushing high schoolers aiming for college to SAT's competitor, the ACT exam." As for the ACT, he notes, its "reading for college readiness scores dropped from 53 percent in 2009 to 45 percent in 2019."

The NAEP exam also reflected a drop in reading scores during those years, with Bauerlein reporting that in 2019, "the lowest performers, the tenth and the twenty-fifth percentile groups, achieved the lowest reading scores ever in the history of NAEP going back to 1974." He notes that, in adulthood, millennials still don't read. "In 2019, a survey of 25-30-year-olds showed that they spent a mere seven minutes a day reading." Evidently, "reading for fun or enrichment was no more enticing to them that it had been when they were 17." Or perhaps they were no more capable of reading in adulthood than they were when they were during high school.

In any case, Bauerlein pulls no punches in his dismal assessment of the millennial generation and the older adults who formed them. He writes: "The intellectual fall from the '60s militant to the utopian millennial is one of the great cultural catastrophes of our time. This decline is clearly the fault of our teachers and professors, the school boards and entertainment industry, our politicians and journalists. Every time they scoffed when a traditional guy warned against screen time, or when they killed a Great Books initiative, or put sneer quotes around the American Dream, they hurt and discouraged the youths nearby."

This is not to say The Dumbest Generation Grows Up is devoid of interesting anecdotes, two of which are worthy of mention. One is the riveting description of an appearance by the legendary poet, Robert Frost, at the University of Detroit shortly before his death in 1962. In a packed basketball arena, the elderly Frost read his poems before a rapt audience. Bauerlein brings the moment to life, explaining the kids' motivation at that point in history: "They had to go because if they didn't, they would miss out on an experience that they expected to become an integral step in their education. They were young Americans, and this hour of verse would make them better Americans, better adults, a little more seasoned and aware. That was the understanding the moment the students heard that the poet would do a campus visit."

The other example is the compelling story of Malcolm X and how his extraordinary experience with an elderly inmate in prison turned him from an illiterate albeit intelligent street thug into a voracious reader, articulate writer, and civil rights activist. Bauerlein observes: "This is just the transformation that millennials should consider—this is why I bring it up — but they can't. It requires first, that they come to dislike who they are, and that doesn't go with the self-affirmations on which they've been raised. More basic than that is, of course, the reading problem. I've cited the number of millennials who, as adolescents, found reading an insignificant activity. Imagine what Malcolm X would say to them — and how disinclined they would be to listen."

One wonders if the same or worse fate awaits Gen Z, the newest generation of schoolchildren. A hopeful sign is the increasing awareness by engaged parents of the harm being done to them, and the new resolve of these parents to either remove their children from the public-school system or fight back against its horrors.

As for the millennials, Bauerlein bemoans that "they have exited young adulthood forever, their intellectual habits are formed for life... They won't regret their youth; they won't look in the mirror. No matter how punishing life feels, they won't change their expectations, their beliefs, or their behavior. They don't believe their habits are the problem. It's the world that must change. They will ‘keep waiting for the world to change,' as the song says. It's going to be a long wait."

To read the entire book, go here to order!

The Education Reporter Book Review is a project of America’s Future, Inc. To find out more about America’s Future, visit AmericasFuture.net.

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