American IQ scores have rapidly dropped, proving the 'Reverse Flynn effect'

I read somewhere a couple of years ago, some scientists showed that as CO2 levels rise, IQ scores drop.

But, me, I fully believe it is due to the war on public education by the US GOP. I wish these articles broke down these scores by school type the children go/went to.

Kids sent to high end private schools by their ultra rich parents probably have seen no such decline. It is like the US is trying to move into a caste society, ruling class and serf class.

edit: spelling

I would like to believe this, but as someone with pretty privileged kids, it's not this. It's the phones.

There's not even close to enough CO2 in the atmosphere to have that profound of an effect on our IQ. If it was then our own breath would give us all brain damage and our species would have gone extinct millions of years ago. Pollution and poor air circulation indoors is one thing, but the ambient CO2 in the atmosphere outdoors is another.

I think it would be hard to directly study the ~1/3, ~320-420ppm increase in background CO2 levels over the last ~60 years: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

Maybe raising rats in different CO2 levels over several generations. I would be interested in the results of a study like that.

Agreed.

They're learning precalculus in middle/high school these days, a subject I had no exposure to until late college (and which I had to cheat my way through). I can't help them with much of their homework anymore. School is way more challenging than it used to be.

But then they go home and learn mindless consumerism, social engineering and conspiracy theory from their phones.

The kids are better-educated than myself, but they exhibit a general lack of creativity. Everything is "role playing" other people's behavior or fanfiction expanding other people's work; even their sense of humor is meme-based and monosyllabic. Where their behavior turns malicious/criminal, they're usually getting their inspiration from some counter-culture influencer encouraging it.

A test that measures ability to think outside the box is showing poor results with this generation? Color me shocked!

American white students at public schools do incredibly well on the international PISA test. Most private schools aren’t competitive and there aren’t many students in them.

I had precalculus in 11th grade, and calculus 1 in 12th grade. This was in the early 1980s. We had calculators, but they were simple TI-30[1] type. One line digital display, no graphics. All the problem sets (and graphs) were done on paper.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-30