How Schools Made Gen Z Weaker

The long-looming crisis in Western education is fully upon us. Due to uncritical programs that blindly touted the supposed benefits of technology in classrooms and well-intentioned but misguided counselors who shifted the focus of education from the pursuit of knowledge to the coddling of children’s feelings, Generation Z will be the first in U.S. history to score lower on cognitive measures and academic tests than previous generations.

“And to make matters worse, most of these young people are overconfident about how smart they are,” Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath told the New York Post. “The smarter people think they are, the dumber they actually are.”

Horvath, a cognitive neuroscientist and former teacher, noted that lower test scores are directly related to the amount of time students spend on computer screens in school. He claims that unrestricted access to devices has weakened rather than strengthened learning capabilities. Horvath told Congress that Gen Z has scored lower than their predecessors on every cognitive measure tested, including basic attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive functioning, and general IQ, despite going to more school than previous generations.

“So, why? What happened around 2010 that decoupled schooling from cognitive development?” Horvath asked Congress before concluding, “The answer appears to be the tools we are using within schools to drive that learning.”