me to set aside time at the end of each class so they could complete their homework assignments. That left them free for the other 95 percent of their time to enjoy the many distractions colleges have to offer. Class time was learning time, but once they left the class, all interest in learning anything was simply turned off.
The University of Maryland, which has been surveying students’ study habits for a decade, found that the average amount of time a student spends studying is 14.8 hours per week rather than the 25 hours professors recommend. “It’s something that we still preach, but have I ever met a student who does it? Probably not,” said Marcy Fallon, director of the University of Maryland’s Learning Assistance Service. “As much as we preach it, they’re not doing it.” She is most concerned about students who take four or five courses a semester but study only six to ten hours a week. “That’s a problem,” she said.
The Glorification of Stupidity
The college environment rewards minimal studying, but it’s not where this sense of entitlement and disinterest in learning comes from. For that, we have to look to our culture.
In 1994, when the members of the college class of 2010 were entering the first grade, a very popular movie was released that won six Oscars, including best picture and best actor. The main character was a lovable idiot who defied all the odds by participating in every major event of his lifetime. His philosophy was that life was just a box of chocolates and you could try out a new self-indulgent treat each day.
A decade and a half later, it seems that Forrest Gump unwittingly spawned an entire generation for whom learning and knowledge are superfluous and who sincerely believe that life will simply hand them their own box of chocolates without any of the hard work that previous generations thought was part of the road to success.
In a 1999 public opinion survey, 55 percent of Americans under the age of thirty said they expected to become rich during their lifetimes. But when interviewers asked a follow-up question about how they expected to acquire that wealth, the answers were vague. Just over 70 percent admitted there was no way they would get rich through their current careers and 76 percent said Americans were not “as willing to work hard at their jobs to get ahead as they were in the past.” They also rejected the idea that inheritance or investments would set them on the road to riches. 83
So how were all of these young Americans going to land on Easy Street? Simple, they said, all it took was a little luck. Good fortune, they said, would inevitably catch up with them and bestow upon them their righteous benefits. Economist Jeremy Rifkin, commenting on the results of this survey, said an entire generation had bought into the mindset that there was no connection between work and success. Younger Americans were “increasingly caught up in the media culture that sold the idea of instant gratification of one’s desires” and that “each successive generation of Americans was less willing or even less able to work hard and postpone gratification for future rewards.” In fact, he said, today’s young narcissists seem to have replaced the classic “American dream” with an “American daydream.” 84
What we are seeing among young people today is the very opposite of the Horatio Alger myth. It’s not hard work and climbing up the ladder that leads to success, they say, but becoming a cockeyed optimist and having blind faith that it’s just a matter of time before a sudden bolt from the blue will bestow upon them the riches that they rightly deserve. It’s the attitude that they might as well have a good time and avoid hard work while killing time waiting until the wheel of fortune smiles upon them. I was baffled by this attitude until I read Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking
The University of Maryland, which has been surveying students’ study habits for a decade, found that the average amount of time a student spends studying is 14.8 hours per week rather than the 25 hours professors recommend. “It’s something that we still preach, but have I ever met a student who does it? Probably not,” said Marcy Fallon, director of the University of Maryland’s Learning Assistance Service. “As much as we preach it, they’re not doing it.” She is most concerned about students who take four or five courses a semester but study only six to ten hours a week. “That’s a problem,” she said.
The Glorification of Stupidity
The college environment rewards minimal studying, but it’s not where this sense of entitlement and disinterest in learning comes from. For that, we have to look to our culture.
In 1994, when the members of the college class of 2010 were entering the first grade, a very popular movie was released that won six Oscars, including best picture and best actor. The main character was a lovable idiot who defied all the odds by participating in every major event of his lifetime. His philosophy was that life was just a box of chocolates and you could try out a new self-indulgent treat each day.
A decade and a half later, it seems that Forrest Gump unwittingly spawned an entire generation for whom learning and knowledge are superfluous and who sincerely believe that life will simply hand them their own box of chocolates without any of the hard work that previous generations thought was part of the road to success.
In a 1999 public opinion survey, 55 percent of Americans under the age of thirty said they expected to become rich during their lifetimes. But when interviewers asked a follow-up question about how they expected to acquire that wealth, the answers were vague. Just over 70 percent admitted there was no way they would get rich through their current careers and 76 percent said Americans were not “as willing to work hard at their jobs to get ahead as they were in the past.” They also rejected the idea that inheritance or investments would set them on the road to riches. 83
So how were all of these young Americans going to land on Easy Street? Simple, they said, all it took was a little luck. Good fortune, they said, would inevitably catch up with them and bestow upon them their righteous benefits. Economist Jeremy Rifkin, commenting on the results of this survey, said an entire generation had bought into the mindset that there was no connection between work and success. Younger Americans were “increasingly caught up in the media culture that sold the idea of instant gratification of one’s desires” and that “each successive generation of Americans was less willing or even less able to work hard and postpone gratification for future rewards.” In fact, he said, today’s young narcissists seem to have replaced the classic “American dream” with an “American daydream.” 84
What we are seeing among young people today is the very opposite of the Horatio Alger myth. It’s not hard work and climbing up the ladder that leads to success, they say, but becoming a cockeyed optimist and having blind faith that it’s just a matter of time before a sudden bolt from the blue will bestow upon them the riches that they rightly deserve. It’s the attitude that they might as well have a good time and avoid hard work while killing time waiting until the wheel of fortune smiles upon them. I was baffled by this attitude until I read Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking
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