A view of Santa’s rowing down the Grand Canal in Venice:
News you can’t use:
Fortune reports that Americans born after 1980 lag behind their overseas peers in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving in technology-rich environments. Researchers at the Princeton-based Educational Testing Service (ETS) conducted the study, which was a test called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), to measure the job skills of adults in 23 countries. Our kids didn’t fare so well:
Top 5 countries in literacy:
1) Japan
2) Finland
3) Netherlands
4) Australia
5) Sweden
(The US placed at #17 out of 23)
Top 5 in numeracy:
1) Japan
2) Finland
3) Belgium
4) Netherlands
5) Sweden
(The US placed at #21 out of 23)
Top 5 in Problem Solving in Technology Rich Environments:
1) Japan
2) Finland
3) Australia
4) Sweden
5) Norway
(The US placed at #18)
The results were shocking to researchers, since American millennials are supposedly the most educated generation ever, according to the study. Madeline Goodman, an ETS researcher told Fortune:
We really thought [US] Millennials would do better than the general adult population, either compared to older coworkers in the US or to the same age group in other countries…But they didn’t. In fact, their scores were abysmal.
Millennials with college credentials did score higher on the PIAAC than Americans with only a high school diploma (yet less well than college grads in most other countries). The study concluded that a more expensive and expansive education “may not hold all the answers.” At least not to questions that are not about the Kardashians.
The Worst People of 2015. (GQ) Making the top 5: Kim Davis, Cameron Crowe, David Cameron, Sepp Blatter, and Hillary Clinton. Several could have been rated higher, like Martin Shkreli @ #28, or Jared Fogle @ #8, just behind Bill Cosby. Why should Hillary be ranked ahead of Shkreli or Fogle?
Never a Dull Moment: A Look Back at 2015. (WSJ) Joe Queenan takes a funny look at 2015. Sample of the writing:
…shockers came right out of nowhere. First, the new, less weepy Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, grew a beard, something no one holding that lofty position had done since 1925. That man’s name was Gillett.
Political Dark Money Just Got Darker. (Editorial Board, NYT):
For two years, President Obama has dithered and withheld the one blow he could easily strike for greater political transparency: the signing of an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose their campaign spending.
Wow. It’s almost like Democrats aren’t fully committed to campaign finance reform.
Meri Krimus and Hapy New Yere Wrongo!
Your education dollars at work.
The wrongologist’s recent listing of American standing in the areas of literacy, numeracy, and problem solving should have scared the crap out of anyone who noted it. As it happens, a book was released the following day which may offer a cogent explanation. “The Collapse of Parenting” by Leonard Sax, MD, PhD suggests that the erosion in such benchmarks
along with adherence to cultural norms like politeness, civility, empathy and compassion is the result of the perfect storm of years of uninvolved parenting, the medicalization (medicating)of behavior (no one is responsible, it’s just ADHD)and societal acceptance of increasingly outrageous adolescent behavior. An adolescent sub-culture has taken shape where adults and the educational establishment along with social norms, have become irrelevant and increasingly disrespected, where the only mentors and advisors for this adolescent sub-group are those who have made it to the cellphone contract list while everything else in life, especially parents and other “authority figures” are merely annoyance. This noxious mix has, over the years, been placated by the educational establishment with attempts at making learning fun, dazzling the increasingly hostile student body with increasing amounts of technological stuff, in the belief that a computer on every desk and a plasma TV on every classroom wall will stimulate serious learning.
When that failed, social promotion was the only way out leading to an increasingly illiterate, and math clueless population with little, if any, ability to figure things out.
In a day when Americans are freaked out by Islamist radicals, we might want to consider whether we have our national security ladder leaning against the wrong wall. Pogo’s words are worthy of our attention here: “We have seen the enemy and he is us”.