Is this the "Age of Ignorance"?

From the posted college, FWIW:

Anyone who has taught college over the last forty years, as I have, can tell you how much less students coming out of high school know every year. At first it was shocking, but it no longer surprises any college instructor that the nice and eager young people enrolled in your classes have no ability to grasp most of the material being taught. Teaching American literature, as I have been doing, has become harder and harder in recent years, since the students read little literature before coming to college and often lack the most basic historical information about the period in which the novel or the poem was written, including what important ideas and issues occupied thinking people at the time.

 

I think the author would largely agree with you, though you'd disagree over whether it was ever thus or used to be different.

And I do think that's where technology comes in. I mean, for a certain generation, the internet is a wonderful thing, because when you can look up minor details so easily, it allows your mind to focus on the larger picture. And you had a base of knowledge coming in.

Now, however... If you assume all knowledge is immediately accessible, how do you build an ideology, a worldview, and how do you teach yourself to think?

 

The young and uninformed don't appear to be as enthused about this election season as the last. The interest doesn't seem to be there. They don't get to be on TV or get valentines written to them about standing up and being heard in the enormity of their times. Is this election unimportant? Is this election boring? (Don't answer that last question )

 

One of my best friends is a dedicated Republican who gets most of his information from The National Review and Fox News. He's also a very, very bright guy. Smartest guy in my group of college friends, and the quite successful owner of his own financial planning business. He's intellectually curious, but only about the ideas he has already formed. He does what YGMFKM says people do - strenuously seeks out information that confirms his pre-formed biases.

Anyway, to circle back to Zeke's question, here is what I recommended to my friend: Academic journals. Very few sacred cows there. Peer reviewed. Citations for when they make assertions.

 

A certain generation that grew up having to obtain information in the pre-internet age not only appreciates how easy it is, but is more skeptical about what they find there. (I don't miss those green guides to periodicals one bit)

For those who are 20? I looked it up on my phone, so it must be true.

 

They'll get there. Their guy just isn't at the plate yet.

 

It's not a bad idea -- the Hofstader book was originally published as an article in a journal, IIRC -- if you can get by one thing: readability.

 

Fixed.

 

I have attended three different institutions of higher learning, and I never felt that I was being indoctrinated or anything like that. In fact, the vast majority of professors I've had have worked hard to hide their leftist biases and even push against their liberal students. The most outspoken professors I've had? The conservatives. And I've loved every one of them.

 

Yeah, some of the articles are terribly unreadable. Some of the good ones, though, have completely transformed the way I look at certain issues.

 

You're a pathetic, angry parody.

 

QED