“In Homer's time, people lived in an oral culture, then people slowly developed an alphabetical culture. Now we seem to go to a screen culture. Civilization was fun as it lasted.”

When the ability of people to understand a written text, which teachers from all over the world lately, decreases, not only decreases intelligence, but that makes you resistant to evidence. This is how we get, as a species, to cancel our skills that have so far helped us to build and maintain civilization.

• “Every third person you meet on the street has difficulty reading even simple things.”
• “The reading of one book introduces you to another person's mind in a way in which a Facebook post does not.”
• “Writing is the discipline that teaches you to take a lot of thoughts and gather them in a convincing point of view.”

A sociology professor at the University of Dayto said that, although he takes similar courses, he attributes the same books and gives the same tests as always, today's students do not handle, although a few years ago.

Another teacher remembers the animated discussions of the class about books such as “crime and punishment” and reports how students now say that they cannot cope with such a reading.

Another teacher told how his belief is with his students in an intellectual search was recently shattered. He noticed that their works seem entirely generated by AI, does not show any sign that the student listened to any lecture or read something.

The experiences of these teachers who lament the decline of student abilities are in an opinion article published by The New York Times.

The weakest results in the last 30 years

The elderly have always complained about the “children of today”, but this time there are empirical data showing that observations are true, writes David Brooks, a political commentator and culture in the NYT editorial.

He looks towards the results of US competence tests, which, according to him, suggests that “Americans lose their ability to reason.”

“The tendency begins with young people. The percentage of fourth grade students who achieve results below the basic level in terms of reading skills at the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests is the highest in the last 20 years.”

The same tests show that the percentage of the eighth-grade students who did not reach the basic level was the highest in the three decades history.

Thus, writes Brooks, a fourth-class student who has not reached the basic level cannot understand the succession of events in a story. And a student of the eighth grade cannot understand the main idea of ​​an essay. And fails to identify the different parts of a debate.

“30% of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old”

According to David Brooks, the tests carried out by the program for the international assessment of adult skills tell a similar story, only for older people.

“Adult calculation and literacy skills around the world have decreased since 2017. The Tests of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that the results of the tests on adult literacy have decreased in the last decade.”

He cites the statements made by an OECD official for the Financial Times, who said that “thirty percent of Americans read at a level you would expect from a 10-year-old” and that “every third person you meet on the street has difficulty reading even simple things.”

“This type of literacy is the spine of reasoning capacity, the source of the basic knowledge we need to make good decisions in a complicated world,” Brooks believes.

The ability to process young information, weakened by social networks

The performance gap between those with the best and weakest results is higher in America than in any other nation with similar data. There are several obvious factors that contribute to this general decline, which started around 2012, such as the time in front of the screen, writes editorialist NYT. It depends a lot on what we do on the screen, either the screen of the phone or that of the computer.

He continues: “The active initiation of an information search on the Internet may not weaken your reasoning skills. But the passive travel of Tiktok or X weakens everything, from the ability to process verbal information to the work memory and the ability to concentrate.”

We give up an essential value

David Brooks explains that as we spend our time on the screens, we abandon a value that used to be at the center of our culture – that education, including learning throughout life, is very valuable.

This value, Brooks believes, is based on the idea that life is full of difficult choices, and in order to make these decisions, “you have to be able to discern what is the central element of the situation, to imagine possible results, to understand other mentalities, to calculate probabilities.”

“To do this, you have to train your own mind, especially reading and writing. Reading one book introduces you to another person's mind in a way in which a Facebook post does not. Writing is the discipline that teaches you to take a lot of thoughts and gather them in a convincing point of view.”

The editorialist also writes that today we have the feeling that many people are disappointing with the idea of ​​mental effort and mental training. If in 1984, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 35 % of the 13 -year -olds in the US read for fun almost every day. By 2023, this number decreased to 14 %.

Trump's tariff policy, example of confusion

“What happens when people lose their ability to reason or judge well?” The American political and cultural commentator asks, who also gives an answer: “Donald Trump's tariff policy.”

“I have never seen a policy as stupid as this. It is based on false hypotheses. It is not based on any coherent argument in its favor. It is not based on any empirical evidence. It has almost no expert on its left, right or center. It is the exemplification of the confusion,” he writes.

“In Homer's time, people lived in an oral culture, then people slowly developed an alphabetized culture. Now we seem to go to a screen culture. The civilization was fun,” the editorialist concludes.