You may have seen the various data points that suggest that Americans are losing their ability to reason.
The trend begins with young people. The percentage of fourth grade students obtaining a low basic score in reading skills in the national evaluation of educational progress tests is the highest in 20 years. The percentage of eighth grade students below BASIC was the highest in the history of three decades of the exam. A fourth grade student who is below the basic cannot understand the sequence of events in a story. An eighth grade student cannot understand the main idea of an essay or identify the different sides of a debate.
The program tests for the international evaluation of adult skills tell a similar story, only for older people. Arithmetic and adult literacy skills worldwide have decreased since 2017. The evidence of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that the test scores in adult literacy have been decrees in the last decade.
Andreas Schleicher, head of education and skills in the OECD, told the Financial Times: “Thirty percent of Americans read at a level they would expect from a 10 -year -old boy.” He continued: “It is actually difficult to imagine, that every person you know in the street has an equally simple dissemination reading.”
The backbone of reason
This type of literacy is the backbone of the refueling capacity, the source of knowledge of the background you need to make good decisions in a complicated world. As the retired general Jim Mattis and Bing West wrote: “If you portray the books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, for personal experiences alone they are not wide enough to sustain you.”
Nat Malkus, from the American Enterprise Institute, emphasizes that among children in the fourth and eighth grade, the decreases are not the same in all areas. The scores for children at the top of the distribution are not falling. It is the dozens of children to the bottom that are collapsing. The achievement gap between the upper and lower scorers is larger in the United States than in any other nation with similar data.
There are some obvious contributory factors for this general decrease. COVID-19 hurt the test scores. América abandoned any child who was left behind, which placed a lot of emphasis on the tests and the reduction of the performance gap. But these chimkers began before, around 2012, so the main cause is probable screen time. And not any screen time. Actively start a web information on the web may not weave your reasoning skills. But the passive displacement of Tiktok or the social platform X weakens everything, from its ability to process verbal information to its working memory to its ability to concentrate. You could also bring a sled hammer to your skull.
My biggest concern is that the change in behavior is leading to cultural change. As we spend time on our screens, education, including learning outside the life of a lifetime, is really valuable.
This value is based on the idea that life is full of difficult options: with whom to marry, who to vote, if you borrow money. Your best friend approaches you and says: “My husband has been cheating on me. Should I divorce it?” To make thesis calls, you should be able to discern what is essential for the situation, imagine possible results, understand other minds, calculate the probabilities.
To do this, you must train your own mind, especially reading and writing. As Johani wrote in his book “Stolen Focus”, “The world is complex and requests a constant approach to be understood; it must be thought and slowly understood.” Reading a book puts you within another person’s mind in a way that a Facebook post simply does not. Writing is the discipline that teaches you to review the thoughts and cohe them in a convincing point of view.
The Americans had less school in decades, but from this impulse of intellectual overcoming, they bought encyclopedias for their homes, subscribed to the Book of the Month and SAT club, with many sections of loving, through conferences conferences conferences once you start using your mind, you find that learning is not merely calimination for your ability to render the trial; It is intrinsically fun.
The easy output
But today one has the feeling that many people disconnect from the entire idea of mental effort and mental training. The absenteeism rates rose the pandemic and have remained high since then. If American parents really valued education, would 26% of students have been chronically absent in the 2022-23 school year?
In 1984, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, 35% or 13 -year -olds read for fun almost every day. By 2023, that number was reduced to 14%. The media are now plagued with essays from university professors who lament the decrease in the skills of their students. The Chronicle of Higher Education told the story of Anya Galli Robertson, who teaches sociology at Dayton University. She gives similar conferences, assigns the same books and gives the same tests she always has. Years ago, students could handle it; Now they are wobbly.
Older people have always complained about “children these days”, but this time we have empirical data to show that the observations are true.
What happens when people lose the ability to reason or issue good judgments? Ladies and gentlemen, I present the tariff policy of Donald Trump. I have covered many policies over the decades, some of which I supported and others of which I oppose. But I have never seen a policy as stupid as this. It is based on false assumptions. It is not based on any coherent argument in its favor. It is not based on any empirical evidence. He almost does not have experts on his side: from the left, right or center. It is an exemplified revolti head. Trump himself personifies the essential characteristic of stupidity, self -satisfaction, the inability to recognize defects in his thinking. And, of course, when the approach led to absolutely predictable chaos, Trump, without any coherent, retreated, fluttering plan, responding to impulse to the pressure of the moment while his team struggled to stay up to date.
Producing something so stupid is not the work of a day; It is the achievement of a lifetime, depending on decades of incursion, decades of not breaking a book, decades or being impervious to evidence.
On Homer’s day, people lived within an oral culture, then humans slowly developed a literacy culture. Now it seems that we move to a screen culture. The civilization was fun while it lasted.
David Brooks is a New York Times columnist.