Are young people smarter now than ever before?

By Adedayo Ademuwagun

Recently, the UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg was stumped on his own radio show by a boy aged 9. The boy phoned in and questioned him toughly about the government’s recently introduced free meal programme for schoolchildren and challenged the deputy prime minister very articulately about his claims that giving kids free meals in school had health and educational benefits. The programme costs the government £1bn. The politician was so astounded that he called the boy the most articulate nine-year-old he ever came across. The kid spoke so smartly and his argument was so sound that people didn’t believe he was really just nine.

Over the last century, young people have been doing remarkably better than their parents on standardised IQ tests, and humans seem to be getting more intelligent generation after generation. This phenomenon is known as the Flynn Effect.

In the 1980s, Professor James Flynn found that scores from standardised IQ tests worldwide had been increasing for decades. This implied that when people of a new generation took the same test that the older generation took when they were their age, they scored higher than the older people did, suggesting increased intellect.

This appears to be true in Nigeria as well. A young Nigerian in 2014 probably knows a hundred times more than a young Nigerian in 1914 knew, for instance.
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In the 1980s, Professor James Flynn found that scores from standardised IQ tests worldwide had been increasing for decades. This means that when people of a new generation take the same test that the older generation took when they were their age, they score higher than the older people did, suggesting that people are getting smarter.

One reason for this is that access to formal education has grown exponentially. In 1914, there were scarcely primary or secondary schools in Nigeria and no tertiary schools at all. The percentage of people who had ever been to school was less than 0.5%. This generation didn’t have the opportunity of formal education.

The next generation had a better opportunity because the government and missionaries were building schools around the country and enrolment was going up pretty well at primary and secondary level. By the next decade, there were two universities and one tertiary college in the country. However, from the 60s to the 80s, primary and secondary school enrolment ballooned by 400% and university enrolment increased 200 times. This gains contributed massively to advancement in knowledge.

Apart from increased access to schooling, young people these days also start school earlier than ever before, and they’re learning things more advanced than the children in those days were.

For example, Bukola has a daughter aged 6 today who will be in Basic 3 (or Primary 3) when the new school year starts. The girl got a double promotion from Basic 1.

Bukola says, “There was one time this year when she was in Basic 1. She was still five years old. She kept on pressing me to buy her a dictionary until I eventually did.

“Then one day she came to me and asked, ‘Mummy, what’s the meaning of ‘soliloquy’?

“I was like, “Solilo—what?

“I actually knew the word but I couldn’t remember the meaning straight away. Plus, I was so surprised that she could ask me that kind of question.

“But she spelled the word to me. Then she brought out her dictionary, located the word and read the meaning to me. She was just in Primary 1.

“I didn’t know they had taught them how to look up words in a dictionary and all that. It was so surprising that my five-year-old girl could look up that kind of word by herself at that age!”

“In those days,” says Yemi, an older parent, “A child aged 5 would certainly not be spelling or looking up ‘soliloquy’ in the dictionary. She would hardly even know the alphabet, because at that age she couldn’t have started school yet. Kids usually couldn’t start school until they were six years old.”

Also, young Nigerians today have access to more information than young Nigerians 30 or 50 years ago because of urbanisation and advancement in media technology.

Young Nigerians today have access to more information than young Nigerians 30 or 50 years ago because of urbanisation and advancement in media technology.

The media has advanced very much in the way it provides information, and information is more accessible to young people in Nigeria today than it was to young people in those days. There are TVs, smartphones, and of course the internet now. These are things that older generations mostly didn’t have. So now it’s easier for young people to catch up with the latest information.

Thirdly, young people mature faster these days because of better healthcare and nutrition, and some physiologists think this also means faster mental development.

Hauwa—like every other parent— thinks her son is amazing. She says, “My boy is just over a year old, but he amazes me with the things he does! Sometimes when I put clothes down to wash, he picks the clothes and put them in the water and tries to wash. When power is restored, he goes over to the TV and tries to switch it on. When I leave the cotton sticks container open, he picks one stick and tries to clean his ears with it. I wonder how these kids even know these things and grasp so fast. I think the kids are much sharper than we were.”

But what about thought?

The indices imply that knowledge is increasing from one generation to the next generation, and that young Nigerians know more than their parents and grandparents did. But the thing is, do they THINK better?

Dr Esther Akinsola is a psychologist at the University of Lagos. She’s been teaching university students for decades. From her experience with the young first year students she’s teaching now compared to the young first year students she taught 10 years ago and those she taught 20 years ago, does she think young people are smarter now than before?

She says, “Overall, they’re not. The virtue of hard work is gone out the of window. Many of these students don’t want to work hard, and you can’t separate intellectual development from hard work. Intellectual development doesn’t just happen. You have to work for it. These young ones today don’t want to do that.”

Dr Pius Adejoh is a sociologist at the University of Lagos. He thinks Akinsola is right.

“The young ones today have more exposure and appear to be smarter,” says Adejoh. “They know more on the surface, but when you talk of depth, you cannot compare to young people in the past.

“Young people in those days were more sound and were roundly knowledgeable. They were more grounded concerning the things that endure and have practical value. Young ones today have access to a lot of information but they’re not using it, or using it well. They know all the song lyrics and footballers’ names, but they don’t know much about the things that truly matter.

“Youths of today thrive on the ordinary. They just want to cut corners and take the easy way out. Nowadays, you ask a student to write you an essay, he writes half a page and he wants to get an A. I don’t think our young people are smarter now than before.”

Oseni, 26, responds to that, “The older generation skewer about the way we are. But who raised us? They raised us.

“The society is very different now from the way it was in the past years. Young people are simply adapting to the environment and the present circumstances. If our parents say we’re half-baked, it’s because the structures are half-baked and they’ve raised us this way. Young people are what the environment has made them.”

Flynn is the biggest authority on this subject. In his book Are We Getting Smarter?, he illustrates a point using an imaginary test that measures marksmanship. The test is about how many bullets you can put in a target in one minute.

Flynn assumes that archaeologists have found past records of how people performed on this imaginary test. Records from 1865 show the best score to be five bullets in the target, records from 1898 show 10, and records from 1918 show 50.

Since the test was unchanged, why were people doing better?

Knowledge is increasing by far from one generation to the next generation, and that young Nigerians know more than their parents and grandparents did. But the thing is, do they THINK better?

Flynn explains that people were doing better not because they got smarter at shooting but because the first set of people were using primitive rifles, while the latest set had more sophisticated guns. This means the brains didn’t change. The people didn’t get smarter. They simply had better weapons, and so if the first set had the machine guns that the latest set used and all other things were equal, they could have done as well.

“What is important is how our minds differ from those of people 100 years ago, not whether we label it ‘smarter’ or ‘more intelligent.’ I prefer to say our brains are more modern,” says Flynn in an interview.

“Do we have better genetically engineered brains than we did in 1900? Of course not. Genes don’t select like that in four generations.

So, if by ‘intelligence’ you mean a brain engineered to accomplish greater things, then we’ve made no progress at all.

“But if you mean, is our ability to attack a wider range of conceptual problems improved? Then yes, we have gained in intelligence. The average person can do creative work today that they couldn’t do in 1900.

“If you mean, on the other hand, something like, were people just as adapted to their circumstances in 1900 as they are today? Well, of course they were. They were able to do factory work, to hunt. They could cope with the world as it existed then. They had an average IQ of 70, but they weren’t all mentally retarded.

They were able to do factory work, to hunt. They could cope with the world as it existed then. They had an average IQ of 70, but they weren’t all mentally retarded. So in that respect there’s been no gain in intelligence.

“But finally, if you mean, are people today mentally adapted to a far more complicated world? Then yes, there has been a gain.”

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