Like I posited a few days ago, “Why is the American middle class shrinking?”
Firstly, it can be argued that personal success, whether economic or humanistic, requires the acquisition of knowledge and the application of such knowledge. However, rote memorization and regurgitation on cue, skills necessary to compete in the modern American academic meritocracy, yet often devoid of higher order critical thinking skills, like comprehension and application, are insufficient for real knowledge acquisition needed to enter, for some, or for others, maintain the middle class lifestyle inherited from their parents.
In results for the most recent 2018 Program for International Assessment (PISA) test administered around the world, 15 year old American high schoolers are hugging the averages of all test takers’ educational aptitude.
And, American students have not shown much improvement since in the last 15 years of PISA tests:
American students’ middling performance on international assessments, being outperformed by students in other economically developed nations including, China, Singapore, Macao, Hong Kong, Estonia, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Korea, Poland, Sweden and New Zealand, could suggest one possible reason for a shrinking American middle class, but there’s more to the story.
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