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Comment by doix | Hacker News Reader

For what it's worth, my father is a civil engineering professor and has been complaining that students have been getting dumber for 30ish years at this point. That predates smartphones and laptops weren't a common occurrence in lecture halls yet.

The gradient of the graphs in the article is pretty worrying though and I'm sure that phones/social media definitely have some effect.

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And it has probably been true for 30 years. I’ve been increasingly dismayed at the stark loss of competence from what I already considered the low baseline of my peer group.

In my view grade inflation, no child left behind, common core, the lack of streamlining and gifted programs, the democratization of university, the increased cost of university and the reluctance to fail people who have paid so much money, rampant cheating by international students, etc all played a roll. Phones just poured fuel on the fire.

I think there is a multi-generational trend. 150 years ago graduating highschool used to really mean something, now it's almost impossible not to. And that's not because everybody got smarter. Even the abject idiots with awful attendance get handed diplomas. There are now school districts in America where none of the students are proficient with basic math and writing, but they're still graduating most if not all of their students.

See my comment above above the article graph, not showing absolute values is giving a biased view of the change.

Sigh, I can't believe I fell for that old trick. Thanks for pointing it out.

I blame the move to lead free fuel.

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