My mom called me Tuesday afternoon to tell me that one of my former professors was calling me dumb on TV.

Granted, it wasn’t “me” he was talking about. It was all of us, all of us who are under 30 at least. We are, according to Emory English professor Mark Bauerlein, not to be trusted due to our stupidity. Not the kind of thing you want your mom to see coming out of one from your professor. It was like a nationally broadcast parent-teacher conference from hell.

I didn’t make it to CNN’s Headline News in time to see Bauerlein discussing his book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, but just in case the title doesn’t speak enough for itself, we can look at an interview Bauerlein gave The Hub last fall. Here’s Bauerlein explaining why he decided to write the book:

“Because in my limited experience as a teacher, I’ve noticed in the last 10 years that students are no less intelligent, no less ambitious but there are two big differences: Reading habits have slipped, along with general knowledge. You can quote me on this: You guys don’t know anything.”

Kind of harsh, huh? But Bauerlein’s not the only one who thinks Americans are adverse to general knowledge. Former Washington Post journalist and author Susan Jacoby has just written a book denouncing what she sees as modern America’s trend toward anti-intellectualism. Titled, The Age of American Unreason, Jacoby, according to a Feb. 14 New York Times article on the book, was inspired to write it on Sept. 11, 2001, after hearing two well-dressed men discussing the attacks on the World Trade Center in terms of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. One of the pair tried to explain Pearl Harbor to the other, and landed, according to Jacoby and the article, on this explanation:

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War.” That’s the only line we’re given. I’ve looked at it, trying to find some semblance of sarcasm, that maybe this guy was just messing with his friend, that perhaps only 50 percent of the population is as dumb as Bauerlein and Jacoby want us to believe. I couldn’t find it.

Maybe they have a point: According to a survey commissioned by Common Core, a group that promotes the liberal arts in public schools, 25 percent of their focus group of 17-year-olds was under the impression that Columbus discovered America sometime after 1750. Did the individuals giving the survey even bother to ask them the rest of the history questions?

Of course, one must ask, why is knowledge necessary? If I were a shoe salesman with no dreams of ever appearing on “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?,” then would I really need to know that 1492 was when Columbus sailed the ocean blue? No major religious tradition has Alex Trebek guarding the gates of paradise. You don’t even need much knowledge (or common sense, for that matter) to become rich (Paris Hilton), famous (Vince Young, he of the dismal Wonderlic score), or powerful (oh, you know who I’m talking about.)

Bauerlein begs to differ. He says that such general knowledge is the basis of our democracy, that our Founding Fathers intended us to have an educated background so we could make sound political decisions. And it’s tough to argue against knowledge. How can it be bad to know when Columbus sailed, or, to pick other examples from the Common Core survey, what famous novel Ralph Ellison wrote and what Hitler’s position was during World War II. (A quarter of students identified him as a weapons manufacturer or as an Austrian premier or as the Kaiser. Apparently, they did keep asking those kids the history questions.)

That being said, I do think it’s unfair — not to mention a little pretentious — to decry an entire generation for its stupidity. The infamous “maps” speech delivered by the South Carolina beauty queen is hardly representative of America’s youth. Surely the rest of us are learning something from our lives?

In his book Everything Bad is Good For You, Steven Johnson claims that all the TV we’re watching and all the video games we’re playing are actually helping us by developing different parts of our brain. By keeping track of lengthy plotlines on “The Sopranos” or complex emotional relationships between characters in reality TV, we’re developing the sort of recall needed to maintain a real social network, and by making decisions as to what to do with our in-game avatars we’re learning problem solving — adaptation, improvisation. I don’t know if I buy his argument though, because those kinds of skills sound an awful lot like what kids are supposed to learn when they go out for recess or play with their dolls or Ninja Turtles. Catch-22 has multiple plotlines too, and I find it infinitely more rewarding than an episode of “Make Me A Supermodel.”

So how do we get people to start reading again? If we are really growing to be this stupid, then what are we doing about it? Should we roll back the clock, destroy all televisions and cell phones in a reversal of the classic Fahrenheit 451 scenario? Or do we just offer them free pizza, as Pizza Hut’s seemingly ubiquitous “Book-It” program does?

I think the point isn’t that we may be dumber than any preceding generation. It’s that we have the opportunity to be smarter than any of them, and we’re not taking it. We have access to more knowledge, more facts, more data than we know what to do with. If I didn’t know when Columbus discovered America, for instance, or who the king of England was when the Magna Carta was signed, then I just have to Google it, and I’m sure I could find a reputable source.

But the Internet isn’t a replacement for memory — the fact that one can look up Iraq’s position on a 3-D globe doesn’t excuse not knowing where it is in the first place. Access to knowledge isn’t the same thing as knowledge. Our challenge is to turn the torrent of information at our disposal — information on former presidents, literary masterpieces and, yes, even “The Sopranos” — into something we — and everyone else, for that matter — can actually learn from. And with our knowledge, we’ll be ready the next time the Vietnamese bomb Pearl Harbor.

Editorials Editor Eric Betts is a College junior from Eufaula, Ala.