Our Children Are Getting Dumber

When I was a child, amidst the craze for consoles and video games, our grandparents used to tell us we’d end up becoming idiots. In my case, that was highly likely, since I was born an idiot and have only perfected the technique of my stupidity over time; through arcade games, my brain discovered what I’ve dubbed “circular stupidity,” that is, a loop for fools. But I’m not here to talk about my own foolishness, but rather the plague of dimwits sweeping across the West, according to the latest PISA report.

The United States and Europe continue to see declining performance, particularly in math and reading. Some experts blamed the pandemic for the educational gap affecting new generations; six years later, there is no trace of the pandemic left (except in mental health clinics), and Western children are getting dumber by the day. On the other side of the scale, all those children from the East (Singapore, China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan) keep improving their results, especially in math, though I am not suggesting for a moment that we should slit our own children’s eyes.

For decades, the Left has harped on about academic inequality, claiming that disadvantaged children get worse results because they have fewer resources, rather than encouraging them to study hard and exercise their right to social and economic mobility. Now we see the consequences of trying to close that gap: the current PISA disaster no longer distinguishes between the privileged and the disadvantaged; everyone is becoming equally thick. The Left, remember, always levels down. 

I confess that the decline in mathematical and scientific proficiency worries me little. Beyond basic rudiments and general concepts, math works just as well with the help of any electronic device. The same cannot be said for reading. The crisis reflected in the PISA report is profound: children no longer understand what they read, and what’s more, they don’t read at all. And obviously, the two are connected.