To the Editor:

I read "The Millennial Muddle" (The Chronicle, October 11) with great interest, given my own research on how the generation interacts online. The power of Mr. Howe and Mr. Strauss's Millennials Rising is indeed limited by its scope, 600 young people of Fairfax County, Va. Yet these are precisely the sort of ambitious students I teach. They are cautious—perhaps overly so—and deferential to authority, anxious about achievement, close to their parents, and convinced they are special.

Despite the problems with the Howe and Strauss study, I'd also take issue with how Jean M. Twenge's Generation Me depicts Millennials as shallow and narcissistic. Since when in the postwar era has a generation of young people not focused on themselves, even when marching against the war in Vietnam?

In the same way, Mark Baulerlein's very use of "dumbest" reveals an authorial bias; while I've not read his book yet, I have read the National Endowment for the Arts' Reading at Risk, to which he contributed. There, too, I found authors cranky about America's youth, not understanding how new forms of literacy are making the young creators of, as well as consumers of, new media.

I've long said about my X'er peers that "we missed the 1960s party and ended up with the leftovers in the 70s." Our watchwords were either some F-bomb or "It's not my fault." Millennials may utter "I'm confused" too often and not deal well with ambiguity, but they learn fast.

Perhaps the critics of Millennials, all boomers or X'ers, are either basking in the afterglow of their own youth or angry about what they've lost. In the end, I'll opt for the kids I see in Millennials Rising.

Joseph J. Essid
Director, Writing Center
University of Richmond
Richmond, Va.