“Human intelligence is one of the most fragile things in nature,” cultural critic Neil Postman once wrote. It doesn’t take much to distract it, suppress it, or even annihilate it. ”
In 1988, a former Hollywood actor was in the White House, and Postman was concerned about the dominance of pictures over words in American media, culture, and politics. Television, he argued in an essay in his book Conscientious Objector, “conditions our minds to understand the world through fragmented images, and pushes other media in that direction.” “Culture does not need to force its scholars into flight to render them powerless. Culture does not need to burn books to avoid being read. . . There are other ways to achieve stupidity. ”
What may have seemed awkward in 1988 looks more like a prophecy from the perspective of 2024. This month, the OECD released the results of a major study. It is an in-person assessment of the literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills of 160,000 16-year-old adults. 65 locations in 31 different countries and economies. When compared to the last set of assessments 10 years ago, the trend in literacy was significant. Only two countries saw a significant increase in proficiency (Finland and Denmark), 14 countries remained stable, and 11 countries experienced a significant decline, with South Korea, Lithuania, New Zealand, and Poland seeing the largest declines.
Literacy among tertiary-educated adults (e.g. university graduates) declined in 13 countries and rose only in Finland, but almost all countries and economies saw declines in literacy among adults with upper-secondary education or below. Ta. Singapore and the United States had the greatest disparities in both literacy and numeracy.
“Thirty percent of Americans are reading at the level expected for a 10-year-old,” Andreas Schleicher, director of education and skills at the OECD, told me. Literacy level 1 or below. “What is actually difficult to imagine is that one in three people you meet on the street has difficulty reading even simple things.”
In some countries, this deterioration is partially explained by aging populations and rising immigration levels, but Schleicher says these factors alone cannot fully explain the trend. His own hypothesis will come as no surprise to Postman. Technology has changed the way many of us consume information, from longer, more complex texts like books and newspaper articles to shorter social media posts and video clips.
At the same time, social media has made people more likely to read things that confirm their own opinions rather than engage with diverse perspectives. ), we need to distinguish between fact and opinion, avoid ambiguity, and manage complexity,” Schleicher explained.
The impact on politics and the quality of public debate is already clear. These too were foreseen. In 2007, author Caleb Crane wrote an article in The New Yorker called “The Twilight of Books” about what a culture that became illiterate could look like. In oral culture, clichés and stereotypes are valued, conflicts and name-calling are prized because they are memorable, and speakers tend not to correct themselves, because “having to explain past contradictions is only in a literate culture,” he writes. ”. Is it well known?
These trends are not inevitable or irreversible. Finland shows the potential of quality education and strong social norms to maintain high levels of literacy, even in a world with TikTok. The UK shows the difference that improving schooling can make. In the UK, 16- to 24-year-olds are much more proficient in reading and writing than they were 10 years ago.
The question of whether AI can alleviate the problem or make it worse is even more difficult. Systems like ChatGPT can perform many read and write tasks well. A set of information can be parsed and compiled into a summary.
Many studies suggest that introducing these tools into the workplace can significantly improve the performance of low-skilled workers. In one study, researchers tracked the impact of AI tools on customer service agents who provide technical support through written chat boxes. The AI tool was trained on the conversation patterns of top performers and provided agents with real-time text suggestions on how to interact with customers. The study found that low-skilled workers were more productive and their communication patterns were similar to those of high-skilled workers.
David Orter, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said AI tools will allow more workers to fill higher-skilled roles, and that “the mid-skills at the core of the U.S. labor market will be reduced.” They even claim that it could help restore the middle class.
But as Orter says, to be able to take advantage of the tools to “level up” your skills, you first need a solid foundation. Without it, Schleicher worries that people with low literacy levels will become “naive consumers of ready-made content.”
In other words, without solid skills of our own, we quickly go from being supported by machines to becoming dependent on them or subordinate to them.
