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Comment by blululu | Hacker News Reader

Framing this as a pattern across the entire industrial world is a bit misleading. Looking through the data at Math Scores since 2015 shows big country level split:

Japan: -3

S Korea: -1

Singapore: +1

Taiwan: +9

---

Germany: -45

France: -38

Sweden: -33

US: -10

This is an issue with the western industrialized world. Which ought to make the analysis simple since we can look at what those countries have done differently than their East Asian counterparts and stop pursing those actions as national policy

*edit for formatting

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Those top scorer countries just soooooo happen to have world lowest birthrate. Maybe it has to do with extraordinary pressure to succeed at all cost since one is baby?

I don't think so. While I believe more in the student than the school for success, in the formative years, a good foundation is necessary, as somebody can't know better if they don't know anything.

So, a good education system's effects are compounded for younger children w.r.t. higher education.

So, these education systems need a check and tune-up to adapt them to current age and perform at their peak again.

maybe check out ``western`` birth rates without immigration before spouting next time

I see news and forums claiming the problem is screens/smartphones and social media.

Given the big gap between the east and the west... does anybody know if these are somehow less used/abused in asian countries?

Any other reason why this gap might happen?

Thanks

Living in one Asian country, phone scrolling still happens with adults but kids get a lot of homework and definitely do it. Honestly excessive amounts, quantity over quality but at least studying is happening.

If some third type of country didn't do doomscrolling but ignored their homework to play outside, that's better than scrolling but it's still not homework.

At what age does the homework kick in for kids growing up in Asia?

Speaking for China specifically, and this is all word of mouth since my kids are at a posh international school (apply hate appriopriately):

Elementary school is 8-5, longish day but not too bad on homework.

Middle school (grades 6-9) there's been a recent drive to have less homework so they stay till only 7:00 (!) doing it at school and only a little take home done between dinner and bed.

High school is your life revolves around homework, everyone realizes it's counterproductive to learning but they're all stuck in this trap grinding for the big exams that will shape the rest of your life. Key word neijuan.

Actual Chinese (and other asian countries) can chime in where I'm mistaken.

Here's a data point that should help:

Poland's math score dropped by just 5 points. As for other tests:

Science: -4

Reading: -7.

Much like with GDP per capita, my country is climbing the rankings, but only via walkover.

> but only via walkover.

what that means?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkover

In sports it's victory because the opponents didn't show up or were disqualified.

thanks

Do you know if traditional blackboards have still been used in 2025?

I must ask: as opposed to whiteboards or as opposed to screens for everyone?

Most certainly the latter is not implemented due to a lack of budget. Desks are still two-person as well.

Schools have always worked on a shoestring budget around here.

As opposed to large screens replacing white/green/blackboards.

> news and forums claiming the problem is screens/smartphones and social media

FTFA: “Digital distraction also affects the wider classroom. More than one in four students said that classmates were distracted by digital devices in most or every science lesson. Students surrounded by distracted classmates performed less well, were less engaged in learning and felt less connected to their school. Students who say they did not use AI to draft text for writing assignments outperformed those who say they did. Among frequent users, however, students who used AI to help them learn and were taught how to assess the quality of AI-generated information tended to perform better than those who received no such guidance.”

>Given the big gap between the east and the west

I thought the reason that China and Singapore were so far ahead of everyone else was that they were urban populations vs everyone else include rural areas.

I assumed that Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang were purely urban, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I'm very curious about this as well, because BSJZ is almost an entire proficiency level above (almost) everyone else. That's an insane gap.

While the examples above just draws trolls pushing an immigration angle, consider these other countries:

Finland -45

Bulgaria -38

Malaysia -62

Israel -33

Serbia -44

Indonesia: -24

Full data is on Table 2.9, page 101 in the report: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum...

You know I pulled these figures out of their table on the bus in to work. I selected the largest economies in the OECD (Germany, France, America, South Korean and Japan are the largest economies in the OECD). I added Taiwan and Singapore for context since my contention related to east Asia and only two countries is unbalanced. I should have added UK (-9) instead of Sweden (all the Brexit dooming made me forget that the UK is still a bigger economy and I actually buy some Swedish stuff). As for your list - it seems very arbitrary. Sweden is a good proxy for Finland and they share the same exact trend. Israel is the only other OECD country on your list. The rest are simply random non-OECD countries.

Since you and others have brought up immigration I felt the need to review this thesis. For the OECD plotting foreign born population against Pisa math changes gets a decent correlation (Spearman r = −0.384; p = 0.017). Obviously foreign born is an imperfect proxy for classroom demographics, but it's a start. Definitely a trend, not a huge one, but hard to ignore. I'm honestly surprised that it is not discussed much in a 400 page report with correlation plots between composite indices (a sign of a very extensive data analytics project). Total failure on the part of the researchers). Putting aside any racial claims, I would leave open the possibility that training a large percentage of kids in a language they don't really understand is not likely be be as effective as speaking a language that they do understand. Seems pretty obvious actually. In fact if you drop the English speaking countries from the OECD list (English is very commonly spoken across the globe), then the correlation coefficient goes up to −0.55; p = 0.001).

As they say, demographics is destiny.

Sure you can torture your children with ever harsher "education", almost none of which matters in non-research positions. Then don't be surprised when they run out.

> you can torture your children with ever harsher "education"

Harsh educations don’t work. Neither does modern coddling, prevalent in the West. If any adversity prompts a mental health crisis, you’re at a global disadvantage. Economically and, I’d argue, in terms of quality of life.

The issue is that Mental Health is genuinely a fleeting, seemingly slowly renewable resource brought down by either screens, stress, or something else. I believe that openly talking about it, while a great way to de-stigmatize it, may have inadvertently caused self-diagnoses and worsening symptoms to increase.

There is also something else to be said about Mental Health, coming from one of the countries with the lowest rates of someone taking their own lives, and its not just due to underreporting.

Peru probably isn't the best place to live, but the food, weather, people, and general culture which almost normalizes suffering in an almost Buddhist way (Sufre Peruano sufre! lit. Suffer Peruvian, Suffer!) might have something to do with a more robust mental health situation?

> Mental Health is genuinely a fleeting, seemingly slowly renewable resource

Is there a credible source for “mental health” being an extinguishable quantity? This sounds an awful lot like the battery hypothesis of longevity.

> Peru probably isn't the best place to live, but the food, weather, people, and general culture which almost normalizes suffering in an almost Buddhist way (Sufre Peruano sufre! lit. Suffer Peruvian, Suffer!) might have something to do with a more robust mental health situation?

Handling a mental health crisis or living through hardship in a stoic manner means nothing about your overall performance. People in the past used to take year-long sabbaticals due to sicknesses of all sorts which can definitely be classified as PTSD today. People handled hardship through alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and a level of physical violence that nobody who's experienced it would like it to return.

I see it as the kid that falls and gets up because kids are made of rubber, but if the parents are watching and become alarmed, it gets scared, cries, gets cuddled, and adopts the pattern. Resiliency is not about being stoic and bottling emotions, it's about not framing small setbacks as tragedies.

In these times, the parents might even be aware of the consequences of what they're doing, but can't give the impression to neighbors and authorities that they neglect their kids.

That is a prevalent part of Peruvian culture, which is also collectivist due to Andean culture.

"Resiliencia" is pretty tied to accepting your faults as they are, saying "pucha que (Peruvian slur) ya fue pues". This is often followed up with something akin to "do you want to eat"?

I think everything you said is true, although as an addendum I (anecdotally) often find that some poorer nations are often closer and tight knit, which does cause stigma, but also reduces loneliness and stress associated with some mental issues.

I can't speak for everyone here, but I remember reading about a son of a Japanese-Colombian couple that felt anxious and lonely in Japan, but much more fulfilled and happy in Colombia. He said something about the Chaos bringing life into him, which makes him less introspective, less pensive of the future, yet also more optimistic and welcomed. I feel something similar in the States compared to Peru.

I think it could be because wealthier nations are more socially atomized, and much later in their stages of "Industrialization related anomie", and thus dissolves the "Asabiyya" or social cohesion of that culture.

Or I could just be biased, but I do think social atomization is much greater in wealthier nations.

> I think everything you said is true, although as an addendum I (anecdotally) often find that some poorer nations are often closer and tight knit, which does cause stigma, but also reduces loneliness and stress associated with some mental issues.

I don't disagree as I am from Latam too and feel the same about socialization in first world countries, and social isolation is very likely a culprit of many of the modern world's ills. But let's not sugarcoat the fact that resiliency in Andean culture is a survival mechanism for the brutal working and living conditions that a lot of the population is exposed to, and that resiliency is just the visible, healthier coping mechanism but most of it is invisible and silent suffering too.

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