According to the book The Digital Generation by Bauerlein, Americans between the age of 17-24 are stupid. I found a video about an Indian girl who has just won the spelling bee. This video made me think about how Bauerlein can bring any test or survey into his book and somehow make it sound like the 17-24 year age group is dumb. So in this video they say that this Indian girl has been in this spelling bee four other times and all of those times she has been in the top twelve. Well they also say that Indians have made the spelling bee into a cultural thing, so they have to at least enter enough Indians so they are bound to win the spelling bee. The announcer tells you that kids who make it to the top 212 out of 215 are Indians.
Even when the spelling bee is just suppose to be a fun and challenging thing for kids and teens to do, Bauerlein would make it a main point to show that non-Indians are too stupid to win or even try. Now if Bauerlein used the information from this news clip in his book he would have left out a lot of information. Some examples are the fact that it was a cultural thing for Indians and that they enter so many bees so that they are bound to have an Indian person win. Also, this one girl had to enter the spelling bee three times in order to win once. So really Bauerlein can use any information and take out some information here and there and make any age group sound dumb.
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Hmmmm...very very interesting. That's a great point about how he builds his arguments. I hadn't really thought about it that way.
ReplyDeleteI'm also fascinated by the fact that spelling bees are now a cultural tradition, or a way to signify that your kid is smart. Does anyone else think that's a little crazy? Not as crazy as kid beauty pageants, but still...