I find this article to be more interesting:
<a href="https://www.economist.com/international/2026/09/08/are-teenagers-growing-dimmer" rel="nofollow">https://www.economist.com/international/2026/09/08/are-teena...
Especially the part where it states that part of the issue is in 2000 when Finland had higher test scores then everyone it was attributed to play based learning and less testing. Everyone immediately jumped on this, because if you can have more fun and learn more, of course that is the way to go. This opinion still permeates both teachers and parents. I was of this opinion for a long time, as I went to a rigorous school, and would have enjoyed "play based learning".
It turns out this may have been way off and difficult schools such as those in China and Singapore have the best results. In the Finland example they had only recently switched from more rigorous to more play based, so the rigorous schooling was still being shown in testing.
I think we were all a bit bamboozled by this. Maybe it seemed too good to be true and we should have been more critical of the findings. But the play based learning opinion is still strong and we as a society need to move back to more rigor will make stronger students.
Don't Finland, China and Singapore have the highest IQs of any countries? Why can't that be the answer? To me, what you do exactly in school is likely pretty secondary.
For PISA scores, Finland’s have been declining for 25 years and China only produces scores for the top schools in its top-tier cities (and while US averages don’t look so good in comparison, scores for Massachusetts look good, maybe better).
It feels to me unlikely that PISA scores should be particularly related to ‘country average IQ’ (except by confounders like malnutrition rates) where my understanding is that much of the research has been limited or of such poor quality that the topic has become so toxic as to discourage most potential further research.
frankbreetz · · focus · HN ↗
Especially the part where it states that part of the issue is in 2000 when Finland had higher test scores then everyone it was attributed to play based learning and less testing. Everyone immediately jumped on this, because if you can have more fun and learn more, of course that is the way to go. This opinion still permeates both teachers and parents. I was of this opinion for a long time, as I went to a rigorous school, and would have enjoyed "play based learning".
It turns out this may have been way off and difficult schools such as those in China and Singapore have the best results. In the Finland example they had only recently switched from more rigorous to more play based, so the rigorous schooling was still being shown in testing. I think we were all a bit bamboozled by this. Maybe it seemed too good to be true and we should have been more critical of the findings. But the play based learning opinion is still strong and we as a society need to move back to more rigor will make stronger students.
sfblah · · focus · HN ↗
dan-robertson · · focus · HN ↗
It feels to me unlikely that PISA scores should be particularly related to ‘country average IQ’ (except by confounders like malnutrition rates) where my understanding is that much of the research has been limited or of such poor quality that the topic has become so toxic as to discourage most potential further research.