Every generation laments the woeful state of the one coming after it. Now, it seems, we have the statistics to prove our worst fears. Professor Jim Flynn, of the University of Otago has published research showing that kids aren't as smart as they used to be. His study, of a group of teenagers in England, found that IQ scores for the average 14-year-old had dropped by more than two points between 1980 and 2008. He speculated that the causes could include too much time spent in front of the television or playing video games, and the fact that schools "teach to the test" more often than they used to.
Ironically, the new study contradicts the 1994 findings for which Flynn became world-famous - a theory that intelligence has been consistently rising among all age groups in industrialised countries which was dubbed "the Flynn effect": it found that IQs increased among children over a 28-year-period, at the rate of up to half a point a year.
This may go to prove that you can prove anything, and even subnormal arithmeticians can work out that a two-point drop in 28 years isn't going to make much of a dent in a half-point-per-year rise in the same period.
But don't tell the kids that or they'll never put down the computer games and revise for that test at school next week.
