We're Not Getting Dumber
It has been often said that “people today just aren’t as smart as they used to be!” This typically comes about during conversations on public education, writing abilities, math scores (especially when compared to those in China), and most prominently when one reads works of scholarship from previous centuries. While some may fall into despondency and find themselves where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth, I don’t necessarily believe we are any less intelligent today than yesteryear.
Firstly, I take umbrage with the notion that public education is purely the cause for this purported decline in intelligence. I am no defender of ridiculous schemes and blatantly false school curricula, and I plan on writing further about that in the future. However, I do not fault public education with making our populace dumber. I find that one great issue with the discussion of whether we were smarter in previous ages is that we are not measuring like with like.
In the “great ages” that many Americans will deify as a time of phenomenal scholarship, I think primarily of our country’s founding. Think of whose writings have survived the intervening two centuries to find themselves lodged into the minds of 21st century readers. By and large, our founding documents and their author’s personal correspondences were written by naturally talented, well-educated, well-connected, and rich individuals. These people were the elite of their society. If the hoi polloi of the 1770’s were expressing their opinions and beliefs at the same rate and with the same exposure that we have given to the founders and framers, we may be more likely to find a simpler set of ideas and concerns expressed with a less eloquent delivery. This holds true for many of the great poets, orators, and other writers.
Up until the advent of public education, I would purport that the vast majority of the most praised writers, most eloquent speakers, and greatest scientists were of the upper classes, thus allowing their works to firstly be recorded and then to survive. They were afforded the opportunity to develop the finer skills of the arts and sciences due to their station, not because they were somehow significantly different from us today. By grading the average person today against the top of their class in days of yore, there should be no surprise in finding today’s example wanting. It is simply an unfair comparison.
I would also put forth that humans have not changed so significantly in the past 250 years to warrant such bemoanment over the scholarship of today. Fundamentally, we have just as much capability for erudition yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If we view human academic ability and natural intelligence as a bell curve, then there will always be individuals at both ends of the spectrum. I hold that the adage of ‘when a rule becomes a known measure, then it ceases to be a good measure’ is true and apt here. One reason that some concern themselves with the supposed failure of modern education to create the savants and geniuses they idly worship is because they viewed access to institutional academic education as the only key to intellectual greatness.
However, it is not simply education that makes great intellectuals. One must also consider what I shall call the natural predisposition for academic pursuits. A popular critique of modern public education is that if you grade success on climbing a tree, then the fish will always feel like a failure. Comparing Mozart to an average high school orchestra member is unserious. Comparing an average high school graduate’s writing to Cicero’s is unserious. We must be compare like with like.
The argument that it is the fault of public education for not producing the next Plato also implicitly relies upon the belief that that is the goal of school. Which it most certainly (unfortunately, I would say) is not. One genuine critique of modern public education is that we can’t figure out what it is actually meant to do. Some argue for it to be glorified job training (which I have written about at length before). What's the Point of School?
Others argue that is to produce great citizens who know how to govern their country. I find this approach to be better than others but still lacking in key areas. The worst offenders would argue that education is meant to serve as a status symbol. These are the people who only consider mingling with Ivy League types. Yet all three (and more) of these educational ideologies are present at every public and private school in the country. So it cannot be said that education is failing to meet it’s goals when those goals are almost directly opposed to each other.
Simply put, because of mass public education some have been concerned that there are still individuals who are at the lower end of a bell curve in terms of academic ability. I would temper those concerns by pointing to the greats of yesterday being a small handful of people at the top end of ability, and that mass education has actually been a net good for society, especially in literacy and numeracy. We now have more people who are even capable of contributing to the national conversation, so naturally we would see an increase in the number of people who don’t meet the high standards of the great masters of language and the sciences. Previously, we wouldn’t have even heard from them at all.
Fear not the cries of those who would convince you of the death of academic achievement, for they are not grading today and yesterday appropriately. There are more intelligent people alive and positively contributing to society today than at any other point in human history.
If you’re still not convinced, think of the last time you saw “must be able to read and do sums” as job requirements.