The main topic the first session in the course New Media in Foreign Language Education dealt with was an interview with Mark Bauerlein, who wrote the book The Dumbest Generation – How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (or: Don`t Trust Anyone Under 30).

One important argumentation we find in the interview with Mr. Bauerlein is the misuse of the internet by American teenagers, who only communicate via the internet with their friends after school, instead of regarding the internet as media which contains a lot of information about things that might be important at school. Because of chatting, playing online games or watching TV almost the whole day the pupils do not spare any time for more important matters – studying for school. As a result the teenagers get dumber and dumber and do not know anything about literature, history and politics, in which they do not take part by missing elections.

In Mark Bauerlein’s opinion the students’ attitude towards learning has to be changed by the teachers, who should remind their pupils of the importance that lies in reading books, in order to gain more knowledge that is essential for their future life.

Although Mr. Bauerlein gives a detailed argumentation throughout the interview, I think he is too general in his research by saying these failure can be found in every American student.

Of course there are many teenagers who spend most of their leisure time in the internet by chatting with their friends from school. This fact can be seen as a group pressure because a lot of pupils do that. Unfortunately Mr. Bauerlein does not make a distinction between the lazy children and the pupils using the internet for researching the topics discussed at school.

I think it is important to have communication via the internet with friends you cannot see every day because they live in another town or even in another country, but as some of the children mostly are in contact with their friends from school, I regard chatting as senseless. Although the pupils learn how to express themselves through written language, in my opinion it would be better to meet their friends after school in order to have real face-to-face conversations.

As far as I am concerned teachers and parents should clearly show the children what other things one can do with the internet instead of chatting and playing online games. The importance should be made on researching facts, in order to aim knowledge. Therefore it is the teachers’ task to introduce a more important way of using the internet to their students.

To put it in a nutshell it can be said that Mark Bauerlein talking about his book The Dumbest Generation is too general in his argumentation, although all of his statements seem to fit to most of the American teenagers. The course New Media in Foreign Language Education will be helpful for students who want to become teachers, in order to gain information about how to use the internet at school the right way. It is important for us to learn how we can show our pupils the different ways of researching special topics or events, because the teachers are the ones who have to explain to them why it is significant to have a wide knowledge in their future lives.