Are we getting smarter?
I have just read in the papers of the phenomena called ‘grade inflation’. So apparently the number of A grades has been on the rise for the past few decades.
While it is easy to spot this trend, it is much harder to explain why. Are schools giving out better grades because they care less for weeding out the best? Are schools pressured by the increasing costs of education to give good grades to those who ‘pay for it’? Or is there a possibility we are getting smarter.
The possibility that the human race as a whole may be getting smarter is rather intruiging. Of course to link this to how our grades are improving, we will have to assume that we have all along been using the same standards for grading ( which is not really a safe assumption ). For the sake of argument, I shall take this assumption and see where it leads me.
So now assume we have gotten smarter, why is this so and what does it mean? The question why might be answered with a quotation.
“If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” -Isaac Newton
Is it now because of this? That we have benefitted from the knowledge and intelligence of generations before that we now are smarter? Furthermore, seeing that education now penetrates society like never before, are there now a larger number of intelligent people within our education systems? The possible explanations are endless but I believe these just might prove satisfactory albeit not exhaustive.
Moving on, what might a smarter generation now means to us. I do believe the rate of advancement of technology now is there for all to see, this both accounts for and results in an exponential increase in our ‘general intelligence’ I believe ( general intelligence meaning the intelligence of humans as a whole if it were quantifiable ). Technology allows for the propogation of intelligence and intelligence leads to the advancement of technology, that must be true is it not? That aside, should we thus be worried about the phenomena of ‘grade inflation’? While yes a larger number of A grades out there does make that A every bit less satisfying and it does make it harder to pick from the best. But the truth is that these As were probably deserved, but only if they were graded perhaps a few years back. Herein lies the problem. What exactly I mean, I leave you to decipher. Probably because I might not fully know myself, but also because I haven’t had the time to think it through.
