Despite an increase in achievement on standardized tests, the brainpower of Britain’s brightest teenagers has deteriorated dramatically over the past generation, according to a new study in the British Journal of Educational Psychology.
Researchers at King’s College London compared the performance of 800 bright 13 and 14-year-olds on tests of higher order thinking skills with similar tests carried out three decades ago. The cognitive abilities of today’s brightest 14-year-olds were found to be the same as 12-year-olds in 1976. Professor Michael Shayer, who led the study, believes the decline in brainpower is linked to over-testing in school and changes in children’s leisure activities, according to London’s Daily Mail.
The advent of multi-channel TV has encouraged passive viewing while computer games, particularly for boys, are feared to have supplanted time spent playing with tools, gadgets and other mechanisms. Professor Shayer warned that without the development of higher-order thinking skills, the future supply of scientists will be compromised.
Shayer also ascribes the brainpower slump to over-testing. “The moment you introduce targets,” Shayer says, ”people will find the most economical strategies to achieve them. In the case of education, I’m sure this has had an effect on driving schools away from developing higher levels of understanding.”
Listen to a BBC interview with Professor Shayer here.
I was trained in Psychology and an inventor. While I am currently a diplomat in the UK, I have a strong personal interest in devices for nourishing and exercising the mind. I have created some of my own. Prof. Michael Shayer’s work has fascinated me beyond description and would be most glad to have opportunity to meet with the professor.
I live in London; my office is just by the Trafalga Square.
I agree. The other problem is that teaching to a multiple choice test encourages students to seek the “one right answer” and to be unable to consider the relative rank of competing options. It leads to an immaturity of thought that seems to last far too long.
There is a tremendous book by Dr. Jane M. Healy called “Endangered Minds” (1990). I read it a few years ago, so do not recall details, but I do know that it addresses this issue. Part of it does discuss the research on how today’s entertainment/leisure activities tend to (not just “tend to”…DO!) clash with the ability to do focused work. It also argues that television viewing/video games create the potential for children to become passive recipients instead active learners. (Of course these neutral electronic devices are not directly to blame…). It horrifies me to no end to have students groan when asked to write short paragraphs, or read two-page articles, complaining that it is way too much work (I can feel my skin crawling as I think about this). It is very sad, since thinking, analyzing, discussing, evaluating, and creating – those things that do require extra “brain power” as well as time – seem to be becoming shadows of the past (the old-time coffee houses where people sat for hours discussing different things; these days, this might even be considered by some adults to be unproductive…). We need to do something about this, or we will have generations of students (who were allowed to move through the system even without a sufficient understanding of the material, which seems to be becoming “acceptable” these days) who are filling positions in society that do, in fact, require thought and care…and they will have no clue how to effectively carry out their roles; or worse, they may do them in a rushed, self-gratification-seeking, careless manner. Thanks.
Terri Silver Spring, Maryland