To think primary school children are smarter than we were in the 1980's?

[Littleideasbigbook]

After observing zoom lessons for two weeks and supporting my DD with her school work, I am pretty impressed with the cognitive abilities of 9 year olds in this country tbh.

There is definitely a spectrum of children in DD's class, of both demographics and ability, (Yorkshire village but next to a big industrial town that has a high index of social deprivation) so not all of them are super performers but the baseline level of applied knowledge, problem solving, analysis, socialisation, literacy, speech, presentation and grasp of technology is not that far off what I see at work if I am honest.

The way they are introduced to a new concept and then build their knowledge in stages, contextualise it then relate it to other subjects is amazing. They did a geography lesson on climate and biomes (they all knew what a bloody Tundra was!) and had a class discussion on different biomes in relation to the equator. One boy said 'Oh Miss C, is that an arid climate because of the angle of the sun?' and the teacher (cleverly) linked in with previous learning in science and maths. Don't get me started on their literacy either...they are amazing! When I was 9 I remember being bamboozled by Jesus feeding 5k people with 2 loaves and a few fish (catholic school) but it didn't occur to me to question it and say hang on, the maths doesn't add up here. I hear loads of people slag off the curriculum (and I don't doubt it is a pain to work with btw) but whatever schools are doing to translate it into practice, they are doing bloody well. The collaboration between the children is much better than I remember from my peers too - lots of feedback and peer marking, respectful. I wonder if better nutrition has helped? The internet? Parental involvement? Better quality teaching? Children's rights? I remember being leathered with a wooden spoon by the nuns and disliking school for that because I was a timid, tiny little girl. Maybe learning is helped by a lack of fear?

YABU - the primary aged kids I am in contact with are rubbish in comparison to my generation

YANBU - I have noticed that primary children seem much more able than in my day.

And lots of exam success is based on having a good memory

Social construct. I went to prep school and learned Latin and French from 7. Shakespeare firmly on the curriculum from 9. And nobody blinked. My DM had moved me from a state school where they didn’t know what reading book to give me next because if I read one from the year above what would I read next year? That would never happen now and so my DC are thriving at their state school and I see no reason to move them. Hurray for modern teaching and teachers!

I don’t think so. I started school in 1980 and although I don’t remember learning much else other than maths and English, everyone in my class was competent in these subjects by the end of primary school. This is different to many kids starting secondary school today. However, their knowledge of other subjects is definitely better than ours was. I don’t think intelligence is the reason for these differences and it’s more down to differences in teaching and curriculum content.

Kids are using iPads etc at a very early age nowadays, when in previous generations they’d have been running around outside. This undoubtedly helps cognitive development but possibly at the cost of worse physical health.

I was at primary school in the 80s and 90s and genuinely don't think we did any work besides learning to read and times tables.

In my opinion the gap in ability is widening because they start formal learning too young and the current education system is only suited for the academic high flyers and early developers. Late developers are left behind in reception and cannot catch up due to the speed with which the curriculum is taught.

My DC wasn’t ready in any way shape or form to start school at age 4. Reading and writing was really pushed but it was a constant struggle and as a result they hated anything to do with school and learning. During the next couple of years their confidence was at rock bottom and anxiety was high as they were being pushed to run before they could walk.

There were occasions when other kids would push books in their face and try to get them to read knowing they couldn’t because it’s all ability set. They see their peers doing things they can’t and think they must be stupid. They then stop trying.

I had raised concerns with the school on several occasions over the years regarding Dc’s struggles but it was always brushed off and we were told they were doing fine.

It was only during lockdown we realised how far behind our DC (7) was. Their writing was illegible, spelling atrocious and reading a struggle, yet they were expected to read and learn and apply all this ridiculous grammar and answer difficult long maths questions which had to be read thus requiring good reading skills (so now these struggling readers think they are crap at maths too).

We went back to basics in lockdown: lots of reading, spelling and handwriting practice and basic maths to give them the foundation they didn’t get at school. It has been a blessing for us in some ways as they are doing really well now but without that time at home they would, I’m sure, still be floundering around at the bottom.

I don’t think kids learn more than in the 80s. I learned French at primary school, and I remember geography being very complex and detailed. All those sodding imports and exports. They have a much more varied introduction to art and history though - my two are often telling me about various historical figures that I had never heard of. And grammar is far, far better than when I was at school - we only learned very basic language construction.

Technology is an interesting one. I read an article that suggested that 80s kids actually started coding earlier than kids today - that was certainly true for me. When all you have is a command prompt to work with, you are forced to learn how to communicate with your a computer to some extent. Everything is GUI based these days, so you have to create coding opportunities.

This is interesting as I feel the reverse and kids were brighter thirty/forty years ago. I was concerned modern life/screens/crap food had dumbed them down. IQ levels are dropping.

Really interesting thread and I thought your first post was lovely.

One thing I have noticed homeschooling my year 1 child is that they are given adult vocabulary for things that were dumbed down for us as children.

For example, my 5 year old is currently learning how to use adjectives. When I was at school, words were classed as describing words, doing words and then 'person place or thing'.
My husband (uni educated) still doesn't remember the difference between an adjective and a verb because this vocab came much later, probably once he had stopped paying attention!

The Y1s have all accepted 'adjective' into their vocabulary no problem.

In maths we had the vocab 'reduction and Augmentation' this week, I was mind blown! She got it and understands what it means. Maybe in the 80s/90s expectations of kids was lower.

Absolutely untrue that we teach soft skills and not the 'right answer' in school.

The pendulum has recently swung back in favour of teacher-led instruction, modelling and explanation.

I'm a secondary music teacher and devote much more time to breaking down the skills you need to succeed in e.g. the GCSE listening exam than I used to. The children barely work in groups anymore (partly due to Covid) and we are concentrating on teaching them some basic skills (reading/writing/performing melodies and rhythms). We use lots of formative assessment and far fewer 'big stakes' tests, which they tend to succeed in because we've taught them via low-stakes quizzing.

Daisy Christodoulou's books are a good read on how to assess what children know.

Nope. The children I teach are not as good at maths as to when I was at school. Their timestables and mental maths is a lot weaker. However, that may be down to me being strong at maths in primary school and not thinking about the rest of the class.. There are some string children in maths now and some very weak ones. It is probably the same reflecting back on it.

*strong

Not a question of the dc being brighter is it, more of the education they receive.
My dm wasn't advanced educationaly eg she didn't go to do a levels or uni, but her grounding in spelling, grammar ect was miles better than my own, she had early years, been very well educated.

Df the same but he was grammar school and then uni.
I was amazed at dd grounding in grammar! Far exceeded my own but how does that reflect my own intellengence if I wasn't taught it?. Even dd with sen is doing better at her age than I did at her age, but she has so much support from home and tutors.

Kids now have access to an instant, infinite knowledge base.

Want to know who was king in 1405? Google. When I was a kid if you, your teachers or your parents didn’t know it was a trip to the library to research and find a book that contained the relevant information.

I was an obsessive reader as a child. I was way ahead of my peers, and often my parents, in terms of general knowledge and information.

The internet makes a massive difference.

@Takemebackto98

I’m sorry to say that your story is far from unusual today. It’s a case of ‘tough luck’ if they’re not ready to learn certain things. The curriculum has become a one-size-fits-all curriculum as though children are robots who will learn on a pre-determined timeline.

I remember cover teaching Y1 for a spelling lesson (a few years ago before I quit to home Ed my own DC), they were doing words ending in ‘stle’ such as castle, bustle, hustle etc and ending in ‘scle’ such as muscle. There was a group of children who were struggling so much. They didn’t even know what most of the words meant. They were still learning to spell cvcc/cvvc words like book, look and took and only just about had CVC words secure like hat, cup and pot.
When I talked to the teacher later about it her response was ‘well it’s tough, they are Y1 words, they have to know them’. The poor children were totally defeated.

I was horrified. I mean I knew this was going on but it really threw it into sharp focus for me.

Like you say, the curriculum moves at lightening speed now and if you’ve not understood a concept it’s tough. Schools put ‘interventions’ in place which can be helpful for children but often they are run by non-teaching staff and the child also then ends up out of class missing out on things like art, history, music, PE etc.

All of this is partly why we decided to home Ed our 3 DC 4 years ago!

I was thinking this in the week too. I’m sure I never learnt what subordinate clauses are or fronted adverbials. Not even in secondary school. I still don’t know some of my times tables at 40 and the maths stuff they do in primary I’m sure I wouldn’t have done until secondary. However, there’s a lot of pressure on kids now that I don’t feel we felt as kids. Certainly not at primary school. Kids mental health is off the chart too so maybe it’s all related.

The curriculum is much tougher now than even when I started teaching 20 years ago. It's incomparable to when I was at school in the 80s and spent the days making stuff out of cereal boxes. Does it mean kids are smarter? I don't think so. To be honest, I feel (as a primary teacher) that the curriculum is so stuffed full early on that we don't have time to teach everything in the depth it needs. Some of the creative subjects get squashed out of the curriculum a bit due to the focus on English and Maths results. I would prefer that we covered less but in more depth so the children properly understood it. This is the theory behind the maths mastery curriculum that the government want us to follow, but in reality there are too many concepts crammed in each year group to really master them.

I would like to devote more time to creativity too as I think this can help academic study too.

Want to know who was king in 1405? Google.

Which is why it was a bit baffling when Gove insisted in switching to a knowledge-based curriculum. The knowledge is easy to come by these days. Developing the skills to utilise and apply that knowledge is what kids need.

Children may know how to google, but aske them to find out info from a book and write it in own words with out copying not so easy. (ok thats more high school but it all starts in primary.)

No the children are not smarter now! However it does sound like what you’ve seen is some really good teaching. So how about giving the credit where it is due!

As a dyslexic I don,t think help for children with additional needs has got much better the help I or even some of my friends got seems to still be the excepion then the norm so not everything has improoved.

Based on my own frame of reference I agree with your observations OP. My children know some things now (both primary) that i didnt know until high school. And I didn't learn what alliteration was until I began my A level English

My education was poor in terms of quality until I got to further and higher education.

My daughters school/education is much better and they are both inherently more intelligent than me because their dad is brainy. I won't be able to offer much help once they're at high school!

The 80s equivalent of Googling was looking things up in an encyclopedia or other reference book - or asking an adult. So there were possibly more opportunities for gaps to open up between children whose parents owned lots of books and/or were knowledgeable themselves, and children who had no easy access to reference material and/or parents who were poorly educated.

Of course, there are children nowadays who have no access to internet devices, so there is still that potential for gaps - but the difference is that a child only needs access to one device, even if it's not very sophisticated, to be able to do searches online. A wider range of children will have access nowadays to some device or other, than, say, in the 80s would have had parents who owned a full set of the Encylopedia Britannica.

@lemonsandlimes123

I did give credit where it was due. I was very positive about the teacher and teaching. I think they are amazing. I have repeatedly discussed whether it is socially constructed (better teaching, better inputs from society) versus 'biological' (an evolution in cognition due to better nutrition, more safety) which is what I was seeking opinions on.

I don't know why there is resistance to giving credit to the children too though. It is not a either/or situation, as this thread plays out. Teachers AND children are navigating a denser, more challenging curriculum as a PP pointed out. Credit to them for just doing that IMO.

@Littleideasbigbook

You’ve related your and your DC’s experience which sounds very positive. Others opinions are based on their less positive experiences. Like you say, it’s not an either/or situation.

The incredibly dense primary curriculum clearly works well for your DC and presumably for most quick able learners. It doesn’t work for mine. She would have done much better with my basic 80s education which is why I have reverted back to that during home schooling.