Teens more logical than 50 years ago

A teen's capacity for logic has been growing steadily over the last 50 years, at least in Sweden. The University of Gothenburg has been testing 13 year olds for 50 years using the same testing instrument.

Sweden's University of Gothenburg has been testing large groups of 13 year olds in Sweden since 1961 using the same intelligence test. The tests, given at five year intervals, measure changes in inductive reasoning, verbal and spatial abilities. The most recent analysis from the research, reported in a new issue of Journal of Swedish Educational Research, shows that today’s teenagers are achieving better results in the logic test than they were 50 years ago. And girls are now performing better in spatial (three dimensional) imagination tests than boys, a reversal from 45 years ago when boys performed better on those tests. Allan Svensson, a professor with the university’s department of education who analyzed the data, suggests the improved scores might be due to growing standards of living, access to a greater number of cultural activities, and educational reforms. Sweden has enacted educational reforms several times since the 1960s. Is it the students, or the education system? Student scores in logic have shown steady improvement over the decades, but verbal test scores, which increased during the 1960s, tapered off after 1985. That could be due to the test itself, Swenson said, since it retained “old fashioned” words no longer common in Sweden’s vocabulary, and therefore were more unfamiliar to students. The overall findings burn a hole in recent claims that Swedish pupils’ mathematical skills are declining, since logic and reasoning are crucial in achievements in mathematics and sciences, according to Svensson. Rather than pointing a finger at “inferior talents,” critics should look at other factors such as course content and teaching methodologies, he said.