
Cognitive abilities of 11-years-olds are up to three years behind where they were in 1975. - nickb
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20081027/tuk-class-of-76-cleverer-than-kids-of-to-dba1618.html
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DaniFong
"The tests - designed to assess grasp of abstract scientific concepts such as
volume, density, quantity and weight - found far fewer youngsters hit top
scores than in 1976."

Maybe kids just get outside less?

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frankus
To be clear, I'm not convinced this is actually true. It sure sounds like
someone is pushing an anti-standardized-test agenda (not that I disagree with
that).

But if it is true, note that they're testing highly-gifted kids, who might
very well be getting fewer teaching resources now that they would have in the
early 70's. American public education at any rate seems to be a bit of a
squeaky-wheel-gets-the-oil environment, where if you're not failing tests you
don't need any special treatment.

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dgabriel
Do gifted children have the same resources today that they did 33 years ago?
Not that I think children with developmental needs should be shortchanged, it
is a tragedy that gifted and talented programs have fallen out of style.

But then again, when I was in middle school, a parent sued the school district
because their kid didn't get int the G&T program, so they shut down the whole
thing.

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helveticaman
Does this take into account immigration to England? If not, it's as worthless
as studies saying American students aren't on a par with students abroad. The
question is, which American students we're talking about: the black ones or
the white ones? The distribution of IQ among white students is on a par with
that of other white kids in other places. The distribution of IQ among black
students is less favorable. (This does not mean they are inferior; biology is
about trade-offs, and if you don't live in a city, it does not make sense to
trade muscle for brains; there's a mountain of evidence that proves there are
differences between these two groups, just as there would be between any two
groups that spent over 100 generations in very different places).

Averaging the two groups is not very meaningful. After all, it only takes a
few smart dudes to get to an IPO or win a Nobel prize, although a critical
mass of smart people often proves essential.

~~~
rms
Regarding the downmodding... discussing biological differences in the races is
one of those Things You Can't Say (<http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html>). It's
been discussed here before and it never goes anywhere. I would recommend
letting it go.

I am inclined to agree with you that this study is just as worthless as the
ones comparing American students to foreign ones, but for different reasons.
It's just about what is being tested -- kids may do worse on some measures,
but on average, in the age of Google, everyone is a great deal smarter than 30
years ago.

~~~
dgabriel
You can discuss biological differences, but you have to do it carefully and
extremely intelligently. Eugenics have been used by bad and tremendously
ignorant people to do terrible things, and people are rightfully wary about
entering the "biological difference between races," territory.

In any case, we're talking about the exceptional students, so racial averages
are irrelevant to the conversation.

~~~
yummyfajitas
>In any case, we're talking about the exceptional students, so racial averages
are irrelevant to the conversation.

Nonsense. Assume intellect is normally distributed, with equal sigma to
simplify things (1). Assume a racial difference in mean of 0.5 sigma, then
2.2% of the higher intellect group will be 2sigma beyond the (high intellect)
mean, while 0.6% of the lower intellect group will reach this level.

This difference grows _exponentially_ when we consider more exceptional people
(2).

(1) Between males and females, sigma is not equal. Men have higher sigma, as
Larry Summers famously hypothesized.

(2) To see this, write out the CDF for a normal distribution and use the
asymptotic expansion for erf. The rate of growth is (smarter group's mean -
dumber group's mean)/sigma^2.

~~~
MaysonL
Assume intelligence is distributed proportionately to time spent thinking on
hard problems, _starting in childhood_ , which assumption is borne out by the
biographies of many exceptionally gifted individuals, and things start looking
very different, don't they?

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startingup
This is a topic near and dear to me. I believe cognitive abilities are
falling, but not for the reasons this article talks about. I believe
vaccination may have a strong role to play, and the number of vaccine shots
kids get (let's say by the age of 4) has gone up 5-10 fold in the last 25
years.

I have talked to a couple of immunology professors and they aren't really very
comfortable with this mad rush to have a vaccine fix for everything.

This is a huge topic, but if any of you are planning to have kids, research
this topic of vaccines. Do not blindly accept what your pediatrician says -
they are _not_ all that well-informed.

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bd
That's just the universe getting back into balance.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect>

The raw Raven's APM score that would get you in 1962 1-in-1000 level, would
get you only 1-in-10 level in 1993.

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known
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_race>

------
known
You are a product of your environment. --Clement Stone

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vaksel
well part of it, is we don't need to rely on our brain as much any more. When
my parents were in school you had to do complicated math in your head.
Nowadays you get a calculator.

Same for spelling, in 1975 you needed to be a walking dictionary. Nowadays we
have spell checker.

As far as kids are concerned, a lot more of their time is now "wasted" on TV
and video games.

~~~
gaius
You _still_ need to be able to do the maths in your head, otherwise how can
you interpret what the calculator is telling you? Maybe your whole calculation
is an order of magnitude out, for example. A calculator saves _time_ , not
understanding. The same is true of a spellchecker. Doesn't matter if every
word is correct if no _meaning_ is communicated.

And even if it were true for the general population it wouldn't be true of the
HN crowd... We are the tool _makers_.

~~~
jackchristopher
And math eventually becomes too abstract to calculate manually.

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sdurkin
Flawed tests.

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ram1024
this is what fluoridated tap water gets you... and aspartame

~~~
albertcardona
As far as I know, all fluor (and chlorine) does to water is keep it as free as
bacteria as possible, and make your teeth stonger.

Is there any evidence of undesired effects?

~~~
ram1024
<http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/brain/>

be very afraid

~~~
albertcardona
You mean: be well informed.

Fear may motivate you to get informed, nothing else.

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alexkay
Idiocracy anyone? <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/>

