Remembering when one graduated high school, in the year 2000, looking around and wondering why we all still looked like adolescents. It felt weird. Remembered attending high school graduation for elder cousin's, long before, and thinking they looked like soldiers, like men and women.
But accepted, it was probably 'perspectival' (a word which the built-in dictionary of this phone refuses to accept). One was merely incapable of seeing their own advanced physical form, due to some perpetual 'nowness', or reflection defection—just can't see it in oneself.
But later one went and looked and compared high school graduation photos of people from the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, even 1990's, and compared and contrasted. And though there were obviously people endowed with eternal youth, the average face in the photos kept getting younger (on average). By the time the 2000's came, the average high school graduate appeared, physically, to be in the 8th grade (all things considered).
Society had slowly moved to infantile dimensions. Kids were being coddled to the point of non-advancement, though maybe not intellectually (in terms of academic laws of advancement). Something wasn't adding up.
The average person graduating high school with a common core of capacities believes they have succeeded, but have they? If we keep lowering the bar? Not simply based on test performance, but actually intellectual integration with human life.
And then it hit. One was the first generation to become victims of the 'standardized testing' curriculum. We weren't quite there yet as a society, but soon (and thinking of one's niece and nephew's generation) all of academic life revolves around testing—not only to gauge achievement—but also to acquire funding.
As we slip deeper into this model of education, where kids (and now adults) are believers (academic religionists) in their own advancement based on multiple choice answers to preconcieved and easily studied answers, are we not simply getting dumber?
We can't know. Because we're getting dumber. Smarter at tests, maybe. But dumber at life.
The grading used in Finland for basic education is a scale from 4-10, 4 is F, 10 is A.
Every 3 years there are standardised tests, to measure the skill and knowledge of students, I've also participated in these a few times when I was in school. When I was in school, having the average grade of 8, would now be a 10. When I finished school my grades were 8.2, so now I would have a 10.2, based on the standardised testing scores. This change has happened in roughly 20 years. For some reason, when students have become less capable, the solution has been to reduce the requirements for a certain grade. This difference is by the way even bigger when you go back 30 years.
There are also studies that indicate finnish IQs have dropped by 10-15 points since the 90s. I read about these studies over 10 years ago, and even back then the drop was around 10 points.
I think there is a link between intellect and physical development. I know for a fact, that teenagers are less developed physically now than 20, 30 or 40 years ago. This also affects their emotional capability, to actually feel emotions. I think that in general people are weaker, physically and figuratively thinner skinned. There are probably multiple factors that contribute to why this is, but it's all speculation so not really worthwhile to voice.