Flynn Effect

The United States and the Role of Education

The most interesting U.S. data come from the subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children (WISC) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). Between 1950 and 2004, gains expressed in IQ points (SD = 15) were as follows:

Arithmetic. Adults, 3.50 points; school children, 2.20 points. Efforts to enhance mathematical skills have resulted in little, even though the percentage of adults who had some tertiary education rose from 12% to 52%. Gains registered in the Nation's Report Card are robust at age 7 and then fall to [Page 922]nothing by age 17, when the ability to reason mathematically becomes relevant. In the 1990s, some schools began to teach matrices problems to enhance mathematical reasoning. That we find huge gains on Raven's Progressive Matrices during periods when there are no arithmetical reasoning gains shows that this is ineffective.

Vocabulary. Adults, 17.80 points; school children, 4.40 points. Data indicate that about 25% of the adults' gain comes from more tertiary education, the rest from the growing cognitive sophistication of the world of work, where the percentage of professional, managerial, and technical jobs has escalated. The gap between the active vocabularies of parents and their children has become large, but there is no similar trend for passive vocabulary. Assuming parity circa 1950, the average preuniversity teenager today is at the 18th percentile of the adult active vocabulary curve.

In sum, today's teenagers understand what their parents say (passive vocabulary) but cannot use their parents' vocabulary when talking to others (active vocabulary). The deficiency is not permanent. Particularly after they enter the world of work, the teenage-speak teenager turns into an adult-speak adult. Nonetheless, although first year students attending universities can understand their lectures, they cannot at that point write in mature prose. It appears that teenage subculture has become so potent as to make it difficult for teenagers to be socialized into their society's mainstream speech community. The Nation's Report Card shows that reading gains over time among young children virtually disappear by age 17 when schools demand that they read and interpret adult literature.

Information. Adults, 8.40 points; schoolchildren, 2.15 points. As for general information (e.g., what continent a country is on), schools have made little progress in educating their students, which is one reason they cannot read adult literature any better. War and Peace is no fun if you do not know where Russia is or who Napoleon was. The schools are competing with a subculture that emphasizes sight and sound at the expense of the printed word. However, the expansion of tertiary education and the sophisticated nature of modern work have meant a better-informed adult population.

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