belfakir, latifa sidi mohammed ben abdallah university, Morocco

Advancing the Debate around ‘Millennials’

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The singularity of the generation of students entering the education system today has excited recent attention of educators and animated debates among education analysts. Yet, the analytical inquiry of the millennial literature discloses a clear mismatch between the confidence with which assertions about the young generation are made and the evidence for such assertions. It seems that much of the debate about the special educational needs of these people has been stimulated by Marc Prensky’s initial remarks on ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’ since 2001. Termed ‘millennials’, ‘digital natives’ or the ‘Net generation’, these young people are said to have been absorbed by technology, which imbued them with refined technical skills, sophisticated needs and learning preferences for which traditional education is unprepared. For Prensky (2001) today’s students are different in that they think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. It is argued in this paper that these pretentious claims and ambitious generalizations made education commentators about this generation need more empirical evidence before they could function as the starting point for any prospective reforms of the education system, in our country, at least.

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Millennials , Generation specialists , technological skills , helicopter parenting , optimistic , confidence

Revue Sciences, Langage Et Communication

9