If results are to be believed, present day students are cleverer than their predecessors, true or false?

Question

Sorry about "cleverer" should have been "more clever", brain cells disappearing fast.

Answer 1

More clever? Maybe.

Better educated or more intellegent? No way, not even close.

Answer 2

False. The results do not in themselves prove one way or the other whether present day students are more intelligent. Fifty years ago, the whole focus of school examinations was different - it was considered important to be able to identify the top 5% of students. Today, the emphasis is on ensuring that a particular standard is achieved by the maximum number of students. These are entirely different (and in many ways contradictory) aims, and have had a huge impact on the apparent level of student success.

It is true that better diet (compared to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) has had an effect on average intelligence, just as it has on average height, but I think this is far outweighed by the changes in educational emphasis.

Answer 3

Students are cleverer because of better and more exposure to information. There has been a tremendous evolvement of collective knowledge since the Internet. Students today are beamed with many high quality options.

However, the testing methods have not really progressed. And you can safely say that application of information is not really tested. Students are tested merely at an information level. Teachers have to improve their skills and be more involved with their students.

You might want to look into Bloom's Taxonomy for a better understanding of your question and an analysis of the possibilities.

Answer 4

It isn't fair to compare present day students with their predecessors. This is because different subjects are being taught and the teaching methods that are used are different as opportunities available now are different from past years. We also demand a different level of knowledge and variants of it.

I also think that we should stop critizing students for their excellent results just because they are good. They have worked hard for these results and the system used for testing now reflects this. There are possibly more people passing exams due to continuous assessment rather than relying just on performance on the day, which didn't suit everyone.

Answer 5

Oh dear god FALSE!!!

I'm from the UK, and when I was at school, we were allowed a maximum of 4 A-Levels. That's the most anyone was allowed to take (unless they were obviously a genius).

I don't see how kids now can be allowed to do 8 or 10 exams and get high marks in them all without the standards having slipped.

I went to a very exclusive grammar school and a good university, so It's not like I'm just think and did badly lol

From personal experience, I have a far greater grasp of mental arithmetic and english language/grammar than a lot of students seem to have now.

Answer 6

We are standing on the shoulders of giants.

If each generation wasn't incrementally more intelligent than the previous one we wouldn't be able to develop technology would we?

I can read and write fluent English, which makes me way more intelligent than anyone of my social standing a century or two ago.
I understand scientific explanations that at one point would have only been known to the top scientists who had just worked them out.

People will still differ in their intellectual capacities. There are different ways of thinking and different kinds of intelligence. Some people may be more numerical than literate, or vice versa. Some may understand a certain concept immediately whereas others may never do so.

But information is so much more readily available than it used to be, so it's only natural that we know more than our predecessors.
And things that used to be complicated are now relatively simple as more complicated things have succeeded them.

And yet every year when GCSE and A-Level results are released people get astounded at the 'record pass rates!!!'.
Are exams getting easier or are teaching methods getting simpler?

But I do despair at appalling spelling and grammar that I see thanks to the internet, text messages and the like. (everyone spells separate wrong, uses the wrong 'there', misuses apostrophes and so on). And people seem to have lost the ability to do mental arithmetic - I know calculators can do it for us, but it's not about being able to do sums and get the answers, it's a whole logical method of thinking which is important.

Answer 7

Either that, or teaching methods improve year on year. I think this is an example of Government intervention at its best.

The Government decided in 1994 or so that more children should attend university. Luckily, from 1988 or so exam results for both GCSE and A Level have been improving consistently, with the result that increasing numbers of 16 and 18 year olds now hold results which would have raised eyebrows 20 years ago, and more18 year olds now opt to continue their studies at university, choosing degrees which will be of benefit to society once they graduate.

Having spent 7 years teaching, before leaving in 2003 to pursue a career, I was amazed at the intelligence, foresight, wit and wisdom of those I taught. The students in my charge never expected me to do their work for them , and nor did I. Oh no, no pressure on teachers to, um intervene in order to inflate grades.

Also, marking schemes released by exam boards do not show that it is insanely easy to pass GCSEs and A Levels at grades A to C.

You have to have spent an hour or so revising.

And to those who believe that there is more info on the interrnet which students these days are required to assimilate in order to pass, they don't assimilate it, they copy and paste it. And yes, we could tell the difference...

Answer 8

yes, and no. if our kids experience thru school is anything to go by, it ought to be no..however, they teach in snippets, whereas we would have covered shakespear, including the plays and sonnets, daughter did the merchant of venice and twelfth night...

same with maths and physics, their exposure is severely limited by compasrison to my schooldays, which were a mere 30 years ago.

i think we had a broader knowledge base, and had to work a lot harder as we didnt know what the questions were going be like. these days they narrow it down, so much so the information is very subjective and not representative fo the subject. so in that respect, no they are not more intelligent than we were, the illusion is created by cramming more subjects in, skimming over them, and pressurinsing kids into performing so the school looks good when the league tables are published.

the CBI recently reported that somewhere in the region of 70% of school leavers we wholly unprepared for life in a working environment... or 3 in 10 were upto the mark..
i'm not sayng anything, as my daughters headmistress reads these quetions, and has scowled and growled at her... (see my profile) daughter just laughs...she's at the top of her classes and in the top 5%.. but teaching today isnt as effective or as complete as it was 30 years ago.

call me old...but i remember leaving school on friday and starting work on monday...being able to read write and count properly. decimal, imperial, fractions and percentages.. and i left in the fifth year with no qualifications whatsoever.

fifteen years later, i went back and got my A levels and then a degree at the OU in sociology. (its so much easier when youre older) kids today wouldnt know the difference between a transuranic element and a noble gas, nor coul d they multiply imperial fractions and give a decimal answer.. and visualising..6cm...how big is that? your index finger or the palm of your hand.. how thick is 40 thousandths of an inch..a ciggarette paper, or an A4 hardbacked envelope? how many millimetres to the inch? how many litres in a gallon?

answers on a postcard...in a few days ill post the answers...and no cheating in the back row... i can see you...

Answer 9

False. Present day students consistently fail to demonstrate basic knowledge of mathematics and science, subjects their predecessors had to know backwards and forwards, not having the luxury of graphing calculators and the Internet.

Ever watch someone under the age of 30 try to make change? Ask them basic questions about how their government works? Ask them what the air they breathe consists of? How many continents there are?

Answer 10

Yes, they are cleverer. Brain is evolving . Just imagine the volume of info at present times and the past

Answer 11

I believe they are MORE CLEVER, yes... I'll believe that because I'm always proving my professors wrong and challenging them with questions they cannot answer. Most teachers stop learning because they have books to look up answers, so not only do they stop learning, but they don't challenge their own minds and tend to forget things as they get older. It'll happen when my generation leads way also. That's why technology keeps getting better and better, and why businesses keep growing.