The Kids Are Better Than Alright

One of the most striking things I've experienced over the past few months talking to people about Everything Bad is how deeply ingrained the assumption is that today's kids are academic underachievers compared to previous generations. In the book I tried to combat that stereotype by looking at the increase in IQ scores, largely because IQ scores were the most accurate measure of the kind of intelligence that I was discussing in the book -- i.e., abstract problem-solving, pattern recognition, and so on. But I've also been exploring some of the data on traditional educational measures -- reading and math skills, for instance -- and it's amazing how solidly the data flies in the face of the "dumbed-down" hypothesis.

Today's release of the "Nation's Report Card" should silence all the doomsayers for once and for all. The report card has been tracking student achievement in reading and math since 1971, focusing on three age groups (9, 13, and 17) and three major demographic groups (white, black and hispanic.) How do the kids of today compare to the late boomers of 1971? Allow me to turn caps lock on to make this point clearly: with one exception, EVERY SINGLE LINE GOES UP. All the age groups are better at math, and both the 9-year-olds and the 13-year-olds are better readers than the kids of 1971.

Now, the one exception is the 17-year-olds, but even that is misleading, because both black and hispanic kids saw dramatic increases in reading skills since 1971, while the white kids stayed exactly the same. This is what we call Simpson's paradox: all the groups either improve or stay the same, but the average doesn't go up. That seems illogical, until you realize that the ratio between the different groups has changed from 1971: there are far more Hispanics being the assessed, and that group has on average lower reading scores. (Not surprisingly, since a full 20% of them are not native English speakers.) So the change in the overall breakdown of the group brings the statistical mean down, even though most of the people being assessed are actually improving their skills.

Combine this new study with the fact that 1) IQ scores are significantly higher than they were 30 years ago, 2) SAT math scores are at an all-time high, and 3) today's kids are undoubtedly more skilled today at things like multitasking or mastering new technologies that are both essential to success in the workforce and entirely ignored by all standardized tests. Add all that together and you get a clear portrait of a generation of kids that are significantly better off intellectually than the kids of 1971. Now, I'm not implying by any means that pop culture is responsible for most of this improvement. (In fact, most of the skills measure by the Nation's Report Card have nothing to do with pop culture.) But the idea that today's kids are an illiterate bunch of slackers compared to earlier generations is empirically false.

Comments

[db]

Thanks for yelling that the emperor (common unwisdom) has no clothes. We need more commentors like you who look at data rather than their own skewed remembrance of things past.

[Mark Ramsey]

That isn't the half of it. Check out THIS link:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&e=1&u=/usatoday/20050715/ts_usatoday/youngerstudentsexcelinreading

"Younger students excel in reading."

17-year-olds are getting worse at reading, but 9-year-olds are getting better. A LOT better.

Naturally, the education department is taking all the credit.

They haven't read your book.

[Peter Erwin]

My (preliminary) impression from looking at the actual charts is that you (or the NCES) are perhaps overselling the reading results a bit. I agree that the math results show a clear upward trend, which is indeed encouraging. But the reading results for both the 9- and 13-year-olds are largely unchanged over the 1971--2004 period, given the up-and-down variations displayed within that time.

It's true that the 2004 reading scores are higher than the 1971 scores for these groups; but one could also say that the 2004 scores are almost unchanged from what they were in the 1980s; both younger groups read about as well in 1980 as the equivalent groups did in 2004. (17-year-olds seem to have peaked in the late 80s/early 90s, and then gotten very slightly worse since then.)

Now, this is, as you point out, dramatic evidence against the common (perennial?) hypothesis that "kids today are dumber/less able than they were in the past". I just don't think the evidence (from this report) shows they're significantly better at reading -- though they are better at math!

[Steven Johnson]

Peter, I hear what you're saying, but that's why I think the "Simpson's paradox" is important. If you look at the ethnic breakdowns, basically what you see is that 70% of the population is unchanged, and 30% (the black and hispanic kids) show significant gains. To me, that suggests that the overall picture is measurable gains in reading, and significant gains in math. But of course, as you point out, most people would probably be shocked that kids today are holding their own where reading is concerned, much less making small advances...!

sbj

[tweedledopey]

So, I'm one of the naysayers, and I must say that I am duly impressed by these results. I have a few questions about the test and what you have said. I did a slight amount of looking on the NAEP site for statistics on the schools in which the test was administered. In this day and age of No Child Left Behind, do we know the average grade for the schools (i.e. if they were all A-schools, this may explain some of the difference). I do understand my statistics and the significance tests/random sampling, but I feel that it would be interesting at least to have some data on that.

I also have a little bit of an issue where you say that kids today are "undoubtedly more skilled...at mastering new technologies." Well, it might be true, but remember that technology wasn't invented yesterday. Johnny 12 year old might learn how to use a computer a great deal faster than grandpa Stu, but Grandpa Stu mastered setting up the antenna long before his grandpa stu did. All I am saying is that I think this neglects the fact that "new technology" isn't a constant.

Penultimately, it would be interesting to see how this compares to other countries. While it's great that the kids are getting smarter (if that's true), if other countries are surpassing the intelligence of our children, then it doesn't really matter that kids today are smarter, because they aren't (and this is where national pride kicks in) smarter enough.

Finally, does the recentering of SAT scores that occurred in the 90's matter at all to your statement of SAT Math scores increasing.

Tweedle

PS. This naysayer isn't worried that kids aren't smarter, he's worried that kids are less intelligent.

[tweedledopey]

Of note, I skipped the logical connection between you and the book. Ultimately, my nay-saying isn't really about stupid, lazy kids (though they are probably lazier), it's more about a lazy school system that appears to me to be broken in some places (namely in those areas in which I have personal experience: Jacksonville, FL and Oakland, CA.

[chris]

The toys this market creates generates the workers it needs. That is not so surprising. Don´t get me wrong. I am also against lamenting how the new technologies ruin our kid´s skills and various abilities. They just go along with the stream. As much as our improved nuitrition has increased physical size and average life expectancy (and who knows, maybe even smartness). Isn´t it just evolution? What it doesn´t do though is to make a distinction between being smart and being wise. Smartness relates to how well you do in school and tests. The skills used in schools are mostly verbal or mathematical. Smartness is to be successful in the given situation and growing smart enables you to take part in this tech society as it is and as it will evolve. But wisdom is directed to a more sustainable sense of succeeding. It wants to make a best use of available knowledge and usually exceeds narrow self-interests.

Do you believe that smartness includes the heart and the spirit? (And I am not talking religion here.)

There are many kinds of intelligence and our own view of it influences how and what we teach kids and what we find a valuable measure.

[Karen]

I wanted to send you an e-mail (but you don't have one listed on your site): But here is the questions we were discussing a while back related to that all the flap about Lawrence Summers and the "differences between men and women" in the acedemic fields of math (or engineering) are "true" to some statistical percentage. "Why", is the question...as to "what makes this the case" if it is indeed the case?

I *think* this is a key ingredient because, if I was to posit a societal distinction....it would be that Guys...from a very early age... begin this "mathematical" and "statistical" discussion and memorization as it related to sports facts and trivia. And it's not just who won or lost and the final score...but very sophisticated statistical stuff like RBI's averages over the season or against a particular team, hitting or scoring percentages per game, per season. And just a host of this kind of complicated mathematical type of "scorekeeping" which is then exchanged among their peers (unless one is a complete Geeky outsider to the social world of boys) and on up through adulthood. And it isn't necessary to even LIKE every sport...or know all of them...any one will do (as you have a *jones* for besiball and its info as yer priority...not any or all sports trivia or info will be *interesting* to you.)

But there's no "comparable" girls experience to this phenom. I can't think of single girl activity that compares by the *early age* at which it begins, or covers such complex - mathematical fomulas and stats for them to "meditate", *muse*, and *female-bond* over throughout life. (Blancing checkbooks nothwithstanding. LOL)

So what do YOU think? Do I have an interesting idea here? It seems to the have the ring of "plausible" if not a kernel of "truth" in life experience to it? And it explains many things about this issue at a very general level.

You can send me an answer via the email address/and or get it from the site where I post. Be most interested to hear your response.

Thanks...Enjoying your recent book: "Everything bad is Good for You."

[Scott White]

Steven, I agree that this report helps show that America's kids are not regressing into brainless deadbeats but I find some of your arguments highly misleading and I disagree that America's kids are getting smarter as you seem to imply. You can find my concerns on my blog at http://scottwhite.typepad.com/

[Ralfy Acuna]

Are these the same kids who have some of the lowest scores in math and science for industrialized countries?

[Stefan Hayden]

I've always heard from my teachers that tests like SAT and others have had their "high standards" lowered over the years. I've never been able to find out if that was true or not.

do you know anything about that?

[Elliot Essman]

Kids as a group are tough to categorize. In working with young people, they don't shock you with their insight if you make the decision to believe in them in the first place. The averages are also not always relevant, since I'm sure was can count on a few solid geniuses to guide us through our dotage.

[disanpoter]

I apologize for not having read Everything Bad... yet, but i've just started Interface Culture (which, i suspect is a very different read in 2005 than it would have been when it came out. what do you think?). I have a few questions in comment form:
A few people have touched upon how society reinforces the development of certain traits, whether it's our defintions of aptitude or intelligence ("abstract problem-solving, pattern recognition, and so on") or preselecting skills according to gender (sports stats giving boys an edge on math and logic). Another book I'm reading (Type Talk at Work ) spends a great deal of time outline skills by Meyers-Briggs Personality Type. The ones you mentioned Pattern - Recognition and abstract problem solving appear most strongly in the most infrequent of the four broader clasification called "Temperments", that of NT (Intuitive - Thinking). So, how strongly, if at all, do you think societies definitions of intelligence are influenced by the relative scarcity of the observed traits attributed to intelligence? and what makes each of these traits a valid assessment of intelligence to begin with?
Going from there, while these statistics demonstrate that the skills tested are far from diminishing in children today, are we testing children for skills that prepare them to act intelligently in a world dominated by data. In Interface Culture (and again, i've only just started, so apologies), you explore the concept of the evolution of message and media, showing how before a new media evolves, capable of handling a leap into higher iterations of meta-narrative, the old media struggles to fit the evolved content into its pre-existing structure. Do you sense at all that these test do something similar, struggling to assess children's ability to digest and process data (which clearly involves more advanced meta-structures) into the traditional markers of abstract problem solving and pattern recognition. It seems to me that merely testing pattern recognition or abstract conceptualization in a way 'flattens' the world today's children have to digest into one level, when one of the greatest challenges facing them is how to navigate not between content and meta-content, but between meta-content and meta^n-content? Even if reading scores today are as good as before, does the tried and true reading comprehension test adequately accomodate the increased urgency for individuals to not merely report back with comprehension what the author's point was but evaluate the authors point for credibility, internal incongruities, and position within multiple discourses? Do these skills assessments adequately test their ability to draw information out of the overwhelming about of data at their disposal - or to evaluate and then extend the ideas of others? Do you think these tests are testing for the most important skills children should have for the future? What are the most important skills in your view?

[disanpoter]

Yikes! sorry that was so long. it's been a while since i've joined online discussion. I forgot how these small boxes warp your sense of size...

[Steven Johnson]

SAT scores were re-normalized about a decade ago to make the average score 500 again, but all the long-term trend studies obviously factor that into their analysis, so were are definitely at an all-time high for math.

The other MAJOR factor here is the increase in the number of people takinig the SATs over the past 40 years -- when they started testing, only a small portion of the high school "elite" took them, so naturally the scores were much higher. Most of the decline we saw a few decades ago was entirely attributable to the increased size of the testing pool, not some general decline in standards...

sbj

[kellymyers]

I just listened to your interview on Fresh Air. As arrogent as it sounds, I am still going to type it. I have, for years now, thought that video games were increasing our awareness...I have the 'I told you so' smile in my brain all day.
Thank you.

[Mathias]

Interesting. There was an article about your book "Everything bad is good for you" in today's issue of the finnish-swedish magazine Hufvudstadsbladet. Sounds like I have to get hold of a copy and read some more.

Have a good day.

[Steven V]

Ditto to kellymyers' post-FreshAire comment, see http://steven.vorefamily.net/2005/07/20.html for a little "I told you so" of my own :-)

[PedroP]

I listened to you on Fresh Air yesterday, and was relieved that you too thought The Sims was such a great game, since it is one of the few games my 11-year-olds play.

That said, I wonder if some of the games that seem to be fostering problem solving aren't really training players, Pavlov-like, to discover what they need to do to "please" the game. My kids have played the Harry Potter games, for example, and I think what they needed to do was to find the only way out of each challenge, and then perform it to the game's exacting standards. Sometimes they needed a tip from another kid to crack a stage in the game. The fact that they could bank what they had accomplished only seemed to allow them to get to where they were quickly. Whenever they decided to start a game over, they would just cruise through the previously learned behaviors until they got to something new. Other classic games like Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong seem to do the same thing.

Again, I wonder if with many of these games it is really problem solving or obedience training? The other question that springs from that is: are we calling well-trained, obedient kids smart? Are the tests measuring one thing and calling it another?

Anthony Cocciolo (1) of TCRecord asks a more profound question: "Can the children of mass-media and video game culture produce their own problems, guided by a vision of themselves, their contemporaries, and the world at large? If such a vision can be articulated, will it consider the dire circumstances plaguing most of the world, or will it only further the proliferation of problem solving environments, leading to a new generation of cognitive geniuses who shy away from the world's authentic problems?" Could you respond, please?

(1) Teachers College Record, Date Published: July 15, 2005
http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 12076, Date Accessed: 7/21/2005 10:08:50 AM

[Jonathan Vos Post]

I can't infer causality from this anecdotal evidence, but my son grew up playing a lot of videogames and computer games. He is now, aged sixteen, a university senior with a straight A average in Computer Science and Applied Math, on full scholarship, with a brown belt in a demanding style of karate, a published author, and an elected member of the student government handling a multimillion dollar budget for a campus of 20,000 students. He is not the youngest student there (he aced the college entrance exams at age 12, and we had him finish 8th grade before going straight to university). The other very precocious students also spend a lot of time playing computer games.

[Joe Auty]

Hi Steven,

Thank you for all of your work in bringing these arguments to the fore!

Since video games are so central to the evolvement of New Media as a whole, and in many ways leading the charge in innovation of human computer interaction (HCI), interface and software design, and digital expression, I think that your writing should be a vital part of public discourse not only to address the sociological impact of games on children, but also to address the sociological affects of New Media as a whole on us as a society.

I think that a significant population of people see video games as just a product to sell to game players, but not many people recognize work on video games as a form of expression, or see the benefits to a society of the maturation of gaming interfaces. Grand Theft Auto may represent the extreme end of this spectrum as far as thinking of it as artistic expression, but when you look at the interfaces in a game like Myst, the Sims, etc. as you know much can be learned as far as developing interfaces, representing the digital likeness of something in our analog world, and in turn how the human mind works and perceives things. I know I don't need to be telling *you* this, but this helps lead to my main point (for others reading)...

By labeling game makers/content creators as the bad guys and responsible for corrosion of our society (be it because of violence/sex in GTA, the addictive quality to the Sims, crimes/suicide attempts related to these games, etc.), we face a possible stagnation of the furthering of our understanding of this medium. As the digital worlds we create become more and more realistic and immersive (be it games, virtual reality simulations, movies, whatever), who is to be responsible for the associated problems created? The content creators seem like the most obvious scapegoat, but we will not get very far by demonizing them.

I know my post is sort of tangential to (perhaps broader and certainly more abstract than) the discussion of a causal relationship between these games and the behavior of children, but I wanted to wear my (amateur) New Media theorist hat and applaud you on attempting to help educate people that these games are no longer as simplistic and benign as Pong or Frogger, but truly relevant to all of us as a society.

I agree with you, let's study this stuff, but let's not go into this study with an agenda designed to find a way to ban these games or label them as evil.

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[Moon]

I'm going to repeat the question asked by Scott White:

"Are these the same kids who have some of the lowest scores in math and science for industrialized countries?"

It is a pertinent question. The U.S.A. remains the laughing stock of the international community, primarily for being simultaneously one of the richest countries in the world and one of the poorest providers of education. (Low funding, low test scores, lateness in achievement of certain levels of ability, etc.)

While this is not relevant to the gaming debate, it does have implications for your claims about the rising abilities of Americans, Mr. Johnson.

How do you reconcile this?

[harry b]

Moon and Scott White:

I'm skeptical about Steve's general thesis, but your objections are not fair. Yes, the US is a low performer as OECD countries go, but his thesis is not that we are better than them, only that we are better than we were. None of the high-performers have, for example, 20% child poverty rates. None of them, furthermore, consign poor children to the least-resourced schools. Few of them have public cultures which are so contemptuous of education. In few of them are teachers paid so much less well than comparable professions (lawyers, doctors, nurses, engineers, etc). So, all in all, the laggardliness of our scores is readily attributable to other factors than the TV our kids watch and the games they play.