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OECD 2016 "Young people in England are the most illiterate in the developed world with many students graduating with only a basic grasp of English and maths, a

OECD 2016 "Young people in England are the most illiterate in the developed world with many students graduating with only a basic grasp of English and maths, an in-depth analysis by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has found. The OECD report rated English teenagers aged 16 to 19 the worst of 23 developed nations in literacy and 22nd of 23 in numeracy. In contrast, pensioners or those close to retirement were among the highest-ranked of their age group."

throwanem 9y ago
Don't IQ tests control for that? I took one as a small child, and while I could read quite well, I don't remember needing to. It was a lot of "use these blocks to reproduce this diagram" and "given these three pictures, which should come next?" type of thing.
- andriesm 9y ago
  The movie idiocracy comes to mind. Apparently the flynn effect slowed down. Some people hypothesize that the wellfare state has a dysgenic effect by redistributing income from high IQ (high income) people to low IQ (low income or wellfare recipients)... It effectively creates disproportionate economic incentives for having children, and some indications put heritability of IQ above 0.7
  - Ygg2 9y ago
    Flynn effect didn't slow down. It actually reversed. https://theeconomyofmeaning.com/2015/11/12/new-study-shows-reversed-flynn-effect-no-more-rising-iqs/ https://theeconomyofmeaning.com/2015/11/12/new-study-shows-r... It's like https://xkcd.com/603/ https://xkcd.com/603/, except White Hat is is wrong on most accounts.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      In 603, White Hat flies from arguments to preserve his naive positivistic view of the world where things fix themself magically. "You arguments are wrong because Flynn effect, and if this one is reversed then your arguments are wrong just because."
  - matt4077 9y ago
    And by "some people" you mean social darwinists advocating eugenics?
    - danieltillett 9y ago
      You don’t have to be an advocate for eugenics to notice a trend. Everybody these days is a eugenicist in that they all support the idea of helping pregnant women give birth to health children by ensuring they are well nourished and given good medical support. The section of 20th C. eugenics that is controversial is the part that suggests that one section of society should have more or less children.
      - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
        It's not been established that there is a trend to spot. Here's a recent and fairly pro-eugenics survey of all the results they could find showing a reduction in IQ: https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2016-dutton.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2016-dutton.pdf And even they basically are only at the stage of saying "maybe there's a hidden trend, that's obscured by other trends moving in the opposite direction" (they think society becoming more abstract has caused a false rise in IQ, due to IQ tests measuring that socially taught facility with abstraction rather than raw intelligence, this may have disguised an actual drop in intelligence). So maybe it does help to have a preconcieved cause to spot this hypothesised trend. Regarding their hypothesis, it's kind of a philosophical question about whether you'd rather have a society full of uneducated bumpkins (not sure there is an english word for someone with raw intelligence but no education) with sharper reflex times or ability to discern colors, than a modern post-graduate who scores slightly worse on those tests but better on IQ. It's also somewhat unlikely that the former is going to be having less children than the latter, so they whole dysgenic thing seems to be on shakey ground.
        danieltillett 9y ago
        I think you are missing my point which is noticing a trend does not mean you are advocating for political position. Unless all the people I personally know are very unrepresentative of society in general I have a hard time believing that there is not a negative effect on IQ due to differential fertility.
jrimbault 9y ago
But most people back then didn't go to university. And the OECD compares across 23 developed nations. Though, in my opinion, education quality has gone down. In France, 2010ish?, in my last year of high school (in one of the best parisian high school) there was a boy who couldn't read aloud a text without stumbling. I don't know if this would have happened in the past. But back then only 20k students reached that stage and now it's 200k. edit: stumbling/stuttering
- asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
  A stutter is a disability not a sign of lack of intelligence/education.
  - jrimbault 9y ago
    He didn't stutter when speaking. He just couldn't read as fast as he was talking so he had to stop every few syllables. In other words, he was 17 and couldn't read fluently. But he wasn't stupid. He was quite conscientious about his side business and bookkeeping. ps: I stuttered when I was a child.
    - danieltillett 9y ago
      The English word you want is not stutter, but stumble. Stutter (or stammer) is a medical condition, stumbling over words is the result of a poor quality education.
      - jrimbault 9y ago
        Thank you, I edited my original comment.
        danieltillett 9y ago
        Not a problem. English is an easy language to begin, but a very hard one to master.
ZeroGravitas 9y ago
But that's just relative rank between developed nations. It would be like Ferrari finishing last in a 21st Century car race and concluding that cars are going slower that they used to.

throwanem 9y ago

Don't IQ tests control for that? I took one as a small child, and while I could read quite well, I don't remember needing to. It was a lot of "use these blocks to reproduce this diagram" and "given these three pictures, which should come next?" type of thing.

andriesm 9y ago
The movie idiocracy comes to mind. Apparently the flynn effect slowed down. Some people hypothesize that the wellfare state has a dysgenic effect by redistributing income from high IQ (high income) people to low IQ (low income or wellfare recipients)... It effectively creates disproportionate economic incentives for having children, and some indications put heritability of IQ above 0.7
- Ygg2 9y ago
  Flynn effect didn't slow down. It actually reversed. https://theeconomyofmeaning.com/2015/11/12/new-study-shows-reversed-flynn-effect-no-more-rising-iqs/ https://theeconomyofmeaning.com/2015/11/12/new-study-shows-r... It's like https://xkcd.com/603/ https://xkcd.com/603/, except White Hat is is wrong on most accounts.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    In 603, White Hat flies from arguments to preserve his naive positivistic view of the world where things fix themself magically. "You arguments are wrong because Flynn effect, and if this one is reversed then your arguments are wrong just because."
- matt4077 9y ago
  And by "some people" you mean social darwinists advocating eugenics?
  - danieltillett 9y ago
    You don’t have to be an advocate for eugenics to notice a trend. Everybody these days is a eugenicist in that they all support the idea of helping pregnant women give birth to health children by ensuring they are well nourished and given good medical support. The section of 20th C. eugenics that is controversial is the part that suggests that one section of society should have more or less children.
    - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
      It's not been established that there is a trend to spot. Here's a recent and fairly pro-eugenics survey of all the results they could find showing a reduction in IQ: https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2016-dutton.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2016-dutton.pdf And even they basically are only at the stage of saying "maybe there's a hidden trend, that's obscured by other trends moving in the opposite direction" (they think society becoming more abstract has caused a false rise in IQ, due to IQ tests measuring that socially taught facility with abstraction rather than raw intelligence, this may have disguised an actual drop in intelligence). So maybe it does help to have a preconcieved cause to spot this hypothesised trend. Regarding their hypothesis, it's kind of a philosophical question about whether you'd rather have a society full of uneducated bumpkins (not sure there is an english word for someone with raw intelligence but no education) with sharper reflex times or ability to discern colors, than a modern post-graduate who scores slightly worse on those tests but better on IQ. It's also somewhat unlikely that the former is going to be having less children than the latter, so they whole dysgenic thing seems to be on shakey ground.
      - danieltillett 9y ago
        I think you are missing my point which is noticing a trend does not mean you are advocating for political position. Unless all the people I personally know are very unrepresentative of society in general I have a hard time believing that there is not a negative effect on IQ due to differential fertility.

jrimbault 9y ago

But most people back then didn't go to university. And the OECD compares across 23 developed nations. Though, in my opinion, education quality has gone down. In France, 2010ish?, in my last year of high school (in one of the best parisian high school) there was a boy who couldn't read aloud a text without stumbling. I don't know if this would have happened in the past. But back then only 20k students reached that stage and now it's 200k. edit: stumbling/stuttering

asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
A stutter is a disability not a sign of lack of intelligence/education.
- jrimbault 9y ago
  He didn't stutter when speaking. He just couldn't read as fast as he was talking so he had to stop every few syllables. In other words, he was 17 and couldn't read fluently. But he wasn't stupid. He was quite conscientious about his side business and bookkeeping. ps: I stuttered when I was a child.
  - danieltillett 9y ago
    The English word you want is not stutter, but stumble. Stutter (or stammer) is a medical condition, stumbling over words is the result of a poor quality education.
    - jrimbault 9y ago
      Thank you, I edited my original comment.
      - danieltillett 9y ago
        Not a problem. English is an easy language to begin, but a very hard one to master.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago

But that's just relative rank between developed nations. It would be like Ferrari finishing last in a 21st Century car race and concluding that cars are going slower that they used to.