The statistics are sobering and damning.

14% of US college students read at the level of a 10 year old.

15% of US college students cannot do math at more than a 10 year old.

Professors at Berkeley find 20-30% of students taking early calculus courses turn up displaying “severe preparation deficits”. Instructors are begging for standardized testing as they find they have to reteach middle-school mathematics in shocking numbers of college students. UC faculty are now in ‘open revolt’ demanding the return of standardized skills testing.

It’s not just the US, a new “Survey of Adult Skills” conducted across 38 high-income, predominantly affluent Western countries, shows that this trend is spread across all the member states.

All of this is has combined to the disturbing fact that Gen Z is the first generation that is provably less cognitively capable than their parent’s generation. Since standardizing and measuring cognitive development since the late 1800s, every generation has outperformed their parents – until now.

The reason?

Cognitive neuroscientist studies show the decline coincides highly with the introduction of screens in the classroom, which started around 2010. Across 80 countries, if you look at the data, once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly. 

Compounding the issue is that besides just throwing out graduation requirements like Oregon has done, standardized testing has been adjusted to accommodate lower expectations and shorter attention spans. After misguided attempts to link test scores to teacher engagement and provide accessibility, some are now calling the lack of testing the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ and even linking calling it a policy that makes racism worse, not better.

This isn’t a US problem, it’s a world problem. Countries like Denmark are starting to act decisively. Severe limits on computer use, and returns to physical book reading and phonics has created turnarounds like the Mississippi Miracle.

‘Modern’ education methods have had their opportunity – and they have now clearly demonstrated they have failed a generation worse than has been done in any time in the last 200 years. That’s astounding.