The phrase “Brain Drain” usually refers to the migration of the intellectual elite of one place to another place. This is often driven by deteriorating economics or politics. However, a recent article in The Economist uses the term more literally – the actual draining away of intellectual capacity. The article reports on the draining away of intellectual capacity, across the board, in thirty-one (31) rich countries around the world. The title of the article was a question, “Can you read as well as a ten-year-old”. On the surface, that seems to be a somewhat facetious question, but the article reflects a study carried out every ten years by OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – picture is the headquarters in France). The study is conducted across all thirty-one member countries and focused on numeracy and literacy (reading, writing and arithmetic).
The questions are not abstract, they mimic problems people aged 16-65 face in daily life, whether they are working in a factory or an office, or simply trying to make sense of the news. The results from the latest tests are unnerving.
The results suggest that a fifth of the adults do no better in math/maths and reading than might be expected of a primary-school child. The direction of the trends is even less encouraging. In math/maths, average scores have risen in a few places over the past ten years but fallen in almost as many. In literacy, a lot more countries have seen scores decline than advance, despite the fact that adults have more and higher educational qualifications than ever before.
It is tempting to blame TV, video games, the sound-bite news and ads, and social media. Indeed, they have to assume some of the responsibility, but the education and training systems are failing as well – if the education and training systems were doing their jobs properly, they would be buttressing their citizens against the stupidities of those other influences.
I am reminded here of the old Tom Lehrer song about “The New Math”, where he sings that the purpose of the “New Math” is to understand what you are doing, rather than to get the right answer! We seem to have forgotten the basics in our quest for educational improvement, whatever that may mean. I would maintain that most students, probably in most countries but certainly in the U.S., have no idea of geography because some “progressive” educational idiot decided to eliminate geography and history from school curriculums and substitute “social studies” instead. Enough ranting, relevant though it is. Back to the OECD study.
The article states that despite a century of technological upheaval, the demand for people who are good with numbers and who have a way with words has not diminished. Indeed, it has grown. AND, adults who do badly in the OECD’s tests earn vastly less than those who ace them. They are also in poorer health, less satisfied with their lives, less trusting of others, and more likely to feel that they have no voice in politics. This trend does no-one any good in a democracy except perhaps the politicians – I have always maintained that the last thing any politician wants is an educated electorate – they might question what the politicians do, and how many of them want that?
The obvious place to start correcting this deteriorating situation is with the children. Most adults are beyond saving just by their age and time limitations. In the U.K., adults have been creeping up the study’s league table mainly due to reforms in the education system that have made the exams for older teenagers more difficult, and have begun to require teenagers who fail them to try again. In the U.S., which has done fairly badly, states are junking tests that, in the past, were used to determine who graduated from high school. Grades are inflated, and no-one is expected to fail – a terrible preparation for the real world if ever there was one.
In too many places, a mania for universities has sapped funding and focus from all other kinds of lessons that people aged 18 and above could be offered. Degrees are becoming less meaningful: the OECD has found that even some university graduates post numeracy and literacy scores that might embarrass a child. Meanwhile “Oldies”, who realise the predicament the school system has left them in, and want to try and correct it, are finding less and less options for self-improvement that don’t involve long and expensive university courses which have all sorts of mostly irrelevant requirements in order to graduate.
The Economist article ends with the statement that, “Accelerating efforts to fix all these problems seems like a bright idea”. I couldn’t agree more!
