Kids Today Are No Dumber Than Their Elders
Mother Jones
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One of my little pet peeves—occasionally given expression on this blog—is the notion that kids today are dumber than they used to be. I’d say that both the anecdotal and statistical evidence suggests just the opposite, but it’s hard to get good comparisons since children are tested constantly while adults almost never are. Every year we hear horror stories about how few teenagers can locate France on a map, but who’s to say whether adults are any better? After all, we never get the chance to herd them into classrooms and force them to tell us.
Today, however, Andrew Sullivan points me to a lovely little tidbit that I can’t resist passing along. As true evidence, it’s pretty much worthless. But who cares? This is a blog! If I can’t draw sweeping conclusions from minuscule data here, where can I? So here it is: a YouGov survey of a thousand adults asking them six grammatical questions. The results are on the right. As you can see, every age group did about equally well. In fact, if you average all six questions, the results ranged from 75 percent correct for the youngsters to 73 percent correct for the senior citizens. That’s no difference at all.
So there you have it. The kids today are all right. Or alright. Or something. In any case, their grammar appears to be every bit as good as that of their elders.
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