There are plenty of people walking around with IQ in the 110+ range who are idiots. IQ is simply a measure of potential intelligence it is not a measure of useful intelligence. Without education, without mentors, without knowledge, a good IQ is largely a wasted resource.
If the upcoming generation really is dumb it is not their fault. If anyone is to blame for that state of affairs it is us because we created the circumstances in which they live. That they appear to have largely lost interest in the world at large says more about us than it does about them. We chose to turn so much of modern education into a factory for producing graduates. The latin root of education means “leading into the light”. In our culture education is principally about finding the right job and making lots of money. We have created a culture where work and money are the over riding imperatives so why then be surprised that this generation has little interest in history, literature, philosophy, politics, science and mathematics?
The imperatives of work and money are only one side of the issue. Take your average 20 year old who decides to take an interest in politics. So instead of being on a social networking site this chap decides to venture into some political blogs. I’ll take an extreme example to illustrate my point. This actually happened to me at the start of the year. On Catallaxy I was involved in a furious debate with Prof Davidson regarding whether or not water boarding and sleep deprivation constituted torture. I knew I was going to win this argument before it even started because I had enough information upstairs to present and could rely on a mountain of peer reviewed literature to buttress my argument. The Professor however would not budge and when I presented this evidence he stated that by relying on peer reviewed literature I was engaging on leftist fantasy world logic. He never conceded the point. So here is this 20 year old reading a professor arguing an all too obvious absurdity. So off he goes to other political blogs and what does he find? He finds the same ideological blinkered attitude where people feel free to present any argument without recognising any standard of what constitutes a reasonable argument. He sees an older generation, full of quotes and historical knowledge but instead of using this knowledge to enlighten the world there is just a continual cherry picking of data to suits one’s political persuasion.
Obviously, he concludes, political blogs are more about propaganda than substantive argument. Perhaps the politicians themselves are more interested in truth than politics. Watches Question Time, listens to pollies in various interviews on TV and in the newspapers. Same problem, complete polarisation of thinking where politicians only support what their party supports. A bunch of clones who again are Rhodes Scholars and purportedly intelligent but continually relying not on reasoned argument but propaganda and sound bytes.
As a teacher said to me recently, the teenagers he is teaching are much more cynical than we ever were, they look on our generation with suspicion and wonder why they have to work so hard when we had it so easy. Again, they are probably going to lay the blame for that at our feet and they are probably right about that.
Now, there is another argument to this but in no way explains why there has been so much decline in general knowledge and a willingness to make a sincere attempt to understand the world. This other argument is simply about numbers. A much greater percentage of people now have high school and tertiary education. When I was in high school there was a very high drop out rate from years 9 -12 because many found good jobs and really were not cut out for all that learning stuff. In those days it truly was possible to find a good paying job without a senior certificate. Now that is impossible. So we have increasing numbers of people entering into grades 11 & 12 and going on to tertiary education. However this will skew the overall talent down because it is being increasingly filled with people who only 25 years ago would not have even finished high school let alone gone to university. Educators had to lower standards otherwise there would be very high failure rates.
8 comments:
Sorry slowly going through your old posts. This idea of the young getting stupider is so dumb its not funny.
IQ tests via the Flynn effct suggest the reverse of course that people have got smarter over the years. It appears that the mean of the population from the 1930s would probably be 80, if you believed them literally.
This idea that the young people today are stupid comes about, in my opinion, due to two things
1) people want to make themselves feel better so they tell themselves this.
2) Young people are more stupid than a fully mature adult simply due to lack of experience. People forget how stupid they also were at the same age.
While I can sympathise with you frustation at conducting a blog argument with someone who should know better but refuses to budge on partisan lines, at the same time I think that the information available now to the young and curious is so vast that it must have a tremendous effect in the future. The great thing is that confronted by this attitude you can move on elsewhere.
I'm extremely envious that the internet was not around when I was a teenager.
Yes most people will use it to waste their time, but they would have done the same via some other method in the past.
"Conrad" has recently suggested on some blog that the Flynn Effect is flattening out. To be expected, over the past century society has become much more intellectually demanding, we now have much better health standards and ideas about nutrition, but all that can only keep driving the Flynn Effect so far.
If we are becoming dumber than can someone please explain to me the incredible number of technological developments that have arisen over the last 20 years? This is evidenced in every home but at another level the first construction of a prototype fusion reactor, the LHC, the slow but inevitable develop of computing technologies based on light, new materials, new physical memory structures, controlling relatively few numbers of electrons for transistor development, new cancer treatments, the incredible success in organ transplants, vaccine developments that now take months not years, the huge success in treating cardiovascular issues, new transportation features making cars much safer, more fuel efficient, and easier to drive, etc etc etc.
What may be happening now is that intelligence is becoming more specialised and narrow. I am prepared to accept that education is failing to create informed citizens but will also argue that in this time intellectual demands of being an "informed citizen" are beyond our capacity. The quantity of information, the complexity of the arguments, the number of such arguments, means that all too often, if we are to argue coherently on many of these issues, that we must do so by occasionally taking some huge leaps of faith. We may be drowning in a complexity of our making.
When I was young, I peddled to the library. Today a teenager can sit in the park and have access to an effectively infinite amount of information. Wonderful in a way but terrifying in another. So much and so many conflicting views will quickly encourage people to turn away from subject matter that is so overwhelming.
In my generation, ironically because of limited access to information and debate, it may have been much easier to develop convictions concerning social, political, and economic issues.
I used to say to people that the upcoming generation perceives the contradictions and folly of prior generation which often remains blind to the same. When the ruckus broke out of Rudd's ETS backflip I was surprised at the outrage. It wasn't so much about the ETS but that as if Aussies were expressing contempt for the way so many politicians deal with the public. As I said to one person who was defending Rudd, "You just don't get it, Rudd thinks he can treat us like cattle, prodding us here and there with rhetorical tricks." I suspect that the massive drop in young support for the ALP is not just a reflection about the ETS but that they have been exposed to these tricks all their lives and are sick of it. That so far they haven't gone to Abbott but are moving towards the Greens could well reflect a desire for a different type of politician just as much if not moreso than a Green perspective. So now we are hearing a great deal of discussion about "conviction" and honesty in politics. If that is true then it demonstrates that the younger generation is much wiser than us.
Our culture is unequivocally the most conceptually rich and powerful society that has ever emerged. There are so many opportunities for the application of intelligence. The upcoming generation is confronted with a host of differing intellectual challenges and opportunities. I don't think that they are going to be able to meet those challenges by thinking about politics, economics, and society in the same way that we do.
Has anyone done any research about whether the flood of untested or insuffieciently tested chemical that have gone into every product we have used in the past forty years have done any long-term damage to the last two generations,thus the seeming obtacles to basic cognitive skills we seem to be having now? I'm not being agist. I find greater and greater difficulty getting the simplest requests through to all kinds of people. I see a connection between the environment and the autism, the short attention spans, and the rash of learning disabilities I've witnessed recently. Of course, I have no proof. I'm just wondering if we've even asked that question. Sincerely, Kimberly
Hi Kimberly,
You are not alone in your observations regarding the cognitive capacities in the general population. There have been increases in the rates of neurodevelopmental disorders and this can only be partly explained by better diagnostic and screening methods. There is unequivocal evidence of increasing "foreign" material being present in our bodies. There are a great many confounding factors here so it is extremely difficult to determine causation.
In some individuals it will be a case of toxins, or more likely, multiple toxin exposures. For example, an Australian study last year even warned pregnant women to avoid spending too much time near main roads. There are some studies out there which at least suggest that the increases in some disorders(immunological related disorders are markedly rising in some conditions)which have neurodevelopmental implications. A change in immunological functions can have profound implications in that regard. Nonetheless we are probably only talking about very small numbers.
There is something else happening but I don't know what. I'm not sure it is even a decline but rather shift in cognitive skills across the population.
Kimberly, your comment just reminded me of some Australian research released in the last two weeks. It was claimed that 1 in 4 Australian adolescents have a mental disorder. Present tense, not over periods of time. I didn't even read the news release because I thought the figure was ridiculous. So I asked a friend of mine who is a high school teacher and he replied more like 1 in 8 for a clear mental disorder but possibly 1 in 4 for "sub-clinical" or prodromal(prefiguring pathology) symptoms.
I'm puzzled by that but I'd like to see some peer review on the study. Still worrying though because remember that the people publishing the results themselves must have felt somewhat shocked by the 1 in 4 figure. So they probably know they are going out on a limb and worked extra hard to get the figures right. Or am I being too optimistic?
As much as the media try to deny it, I think television plays a large part in the loss of cognitive skills. The younger generation has had it for more of their lives. Fahrenheit 451.
There are empirical studies supporting your contention Rob. Surprisingly recent research finds that some types of computer games can enhance cognition but we need to approach that with caution. The difference is obvious, TV viewing is passive whereas some computer games call upon hand-eye co-ordination, working memory, attention(studies show some games can be very good for those with ADHD\ADD), and planning skills. The problem here is skills tranference, I am highly doubtful that these games will make you a better performer, only a better game player.
There is also a paradox here that my IQ hating friends(Glen and Frank despise the concept!). Throughout all of last century The Flynn Effect was in play. This is the very well established finding that IQ has been increasing for most of last century though it may have peaked by now. IQ very strongly correlates with academic performance so there either a huge problem with IQ studies or the dumbing down hypothesis. Probably both.
There are empirical studies supporting your contention Rob. Surprisingly recent research finds that some types of computer games can enhance cognition but we need to approach that with caution. The difference is obvious, TV viewing is passive whereas some computer games call upon hand-eye co-ordination, working memory, attention(studies show some games can be very good for those with ADHD\ADD), and planning skills. The problem here is skills tranference, I am highly doubtful that these games will make you a better performer, only a better game player.
There is also a paradox here that my IQ hating friends(Glen and Frank despise the concept!). Throughout all of last century The Flynn Effect was in play. This is the very well established finding that IQ has been increasing for most of last century though it may have peaked by now. IQ very strongly correlates with academic performance so there either a huge problem with IQ studies or the dumbing down hypothesis. Probably both.
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