TEACHERS and politicians complain bitterly about the media鈥檚 current
flirtation with 鈥渄umbing down鈥�. But IQ data from more than 20 nations, including
Brazil and China, shows that since the 1930s each subsequent generation has in
fact been brighter than the previous one. So who鈥檚 right?
New Zealand psychologist James Flynn first detected the IQ effect in 1984.
Flynn found that throughout the industrial world the IQ of children of the same
age is rising by an average of 3 points each decade. But now he says the effect
is accelerating. The IQ of children of the same age has gone up an average 3.5
points per decade since the 1970s and 1980s.
Explanations for the cause of the 鈥淔lynn effect鈥� include better diet and
health, more environmental stimulation, increased out-breeding and growing up in
a more visual culture. The trend toward smaller families could also contribute
to the rise in average intelligence鈥攆ewer children means more parental
attention.
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Many people find IQ data hard to swallow. They argue instead that the
apparent rise is just evidence that IQ tests don鈥檛 measure performance in the
real world. Robert Howard, an educationalist at the University of New South
Wales, Sydney, claims to have 鈥渞eal world evidence鈥� that each subsequent younger
generation is brighter than the previous one. For example, he points out that at
the highest levels of chess鈥攁 game requiring intelligence but no physical
prowess鈥攖he young have increasingly dominated the game since the 1970s,
outperforming older players at progressively earlier ages. The longstanding
record for the youngest grandmaster, set in 1958, has been broken four times
since 1991 and now stands at 14 years 17 days. However, another study reveals
that school textbooks became simpler between 1919 and 1991, which raises the
possibility that rising intelligence in subsequent generations has more to do
with the increasing complexity of everyday life, than any improvement in our
education system.
Indeed, measures of intellectual ability that are weighted more to factors
associated with greater education, like arithmetic, general knowledge and
vocabulary, do not display the same average gains of recent generations in IQ
tests. Between the 1930s and 1970s the rise in IQ in six-year-olds and younger
children was greater than for older ones, suggesting if anything that it is the
education system, which children enter around that age, that is restricting
their intellectual potential.
One definition of intelligence is the ability to deal with complexity, and
certainly our children arrive in a world that is much more complex than ours was
at their age. But if everyday life is becoming a daily intelligence test, then
our educational system has simply not kept pace. Because of chronic
underinvestment, it still uses methods inherited from the Victorian era,
ensuring that school is one of the least complex and intellectually
under-stimulating environments in modern society. If our education is not
keeping pace with life today, then this is where the 鈥渄umbing down鈥� is
happening.