It is a generational right, and probably a compulsion, to look at the generation in the rear view mirror and pronounce them unfit to lead. Hence books like Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation, and Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason. But look at the data, and you’ll see something surprising. The short of the stick in the brains department is being held, not by today’s 20-somethings and teens, but by those born from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. “Compared with every other birth cohort,” writes author Neil Howe in the Washington Post, “they have performed the worst on standardized exams, acquired the fewest educational degrees and been the least attracted to professional careers. In a word, they’re the dumbest.”
Want proof? Let’s start with the long-term results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is housed within the U.S. Department of Education. Considered the gold standard in assessing K-12 students, the NAEP has been in continuous operation for decades. Here’s the bottom line: On both the reading and the math tests, and at all three tested ages (9, 13 and 17), the lowest-ever scores in the history of the NAEP were recorded by children born between 1961 and 1965.
Same story, different test: “The SAT reached its all-time high in 1963, when it tested the 1946 birth cohort,” says Howe. “Then it fell steeply for 17 straight years, hitting its all-time low in 1980, when it tested the 1963 cohort. Ever since, the SAT has been gradually if haltingly on the rise, paralleling improvements in the NAEP.”
The late Bill Strauss did a brilliant job of explaining this through generational analysis. The Baby Boom could be divided into two, the 1945 to 1953 half, who had first access to jobs, and the second half which not surprisingly didn’t fair as well. Those arriving in schools in time for the 1973 oil bust faced a double whammy of a fall in real investments, while women and minorities – who had subsidized teaching by bringing their (often) over-qualifications – were able to move on to jobs that suited their talents.
We face something similar today, and hopefully we’ll make better decisions. We can reinvent the car and create a green revolution. We can invest in our creative genius. We can move beyond scorched earth educational politics of division, and create a hopeful educational vision. After all, is there anything comparable to hope in increasing student acievement?
Neil Howe was Strauss’ co-author on much of that work.
Never mind!
How dumb do I feel now?
Or I could just say what I say to the students when I make mistakes, “I know. I’m just checking to see whether you’re paying attention.”
John,
Why do you say you feel dumb now? What your wrote made perfect sense to me. I graduated high school in 1973. We walked into a perfect vacuum. It is hard to describe, really, but I will say instead of “anything goes,” “nothing goes.” A person could walk right off a moral cliff and never even know it until they hit bottom because absolutely all of the guard rails and warning signs had been removed as being “politically incorrect” before the phrase had even been invented. We were the first generation to be told that no one should be judged by tests. My mother refused to allow me to take any of the tests. Education was oppression as far as she was concerned. I am paying attention, and you are quite on the mark.