Are British IQ Levels Declining – Or Is It Education Standards That Have Declined?

THE BRITISH EDUCATION SYSTEM, over the past thirty years, has become a political football, passed between the main opposing parties, and fought over - as hyenas argue over fresh carrion. There is strong evidence to suggest that exams have become easier as the years have progressed, and many UK businesses now find that degree level immigrants have much more to offer than their British counterparts.

Dumbing down educational standards, it can be argued, has resulted in dumber citizens. And dumb citizens are easily controlled; because they are not taught to think for themselves.

Both here, and on my personal Blog, I recently exposed how the current national debate over our own MP’s Private Member’s Bill (regarding the adoption of Single Double Summer Time) has been hijacked by powerful lobbyists and self-centred interest groups by basing their argument for adopting SDST upon ‘manufactured’ statistical evidence from an old 1998, Labour Government commissioned report – whose authors remain anonymous.

The report, which argues that the adoption of SDST would save lives on Britain’s roads (because much fewer accidents would occur during the extra hour of evening daylight than those additional accidents, caused by the extra hour of morning darkness) can be shown to be a complete fabrication. Instead, what the statistics actually show is that fatal accidents would increase significantly overall; because the extra hour of evening light would encourage more people to visit their local pubs and clubs; indulge themselves in that extra pint; and thus be encouraged to drink and drive.

The report, which failed to consider road deaths occurring during the period 7.00pm to 7.00am; misrepresented around half of its road death data as occurring during darkness - when those deaths actually took place in full daylight (and vice versa) was obviously manufactured to mislead the public at large.

Published by the last Labour Government, in its first year of office, readers will not be slow to connect the 1998 report’s fabrication with the Labour Party’s strong connection with the Licensing trade and Leisure Groups so active in promoting the relaxation of Britain’s Licensing Laws, which the last Labour Government enacted.

There will also be those whom connect the fact that, since the report drew little criticism at the time, it may well have been the precursor to Labour’s tactics of picking only good figures from various data sets to mislead the public about its economic competence – and also the forerunner to that Government believing that the British public would be so easily swayed by sexing-up intelligence reports prior to the Iraq invasion.

Politicians, of all parties, have always been keen to manipulate public opinion. And the easiest way they can find to do that is to: ‘come up with some figures’  - and then present them as fact. But what is so worrying about this trend is that the general public, and other politicians, are so easily taken-in. It seems that figures, because they are seemingly produced by a computer, are simply assumed to be correct.

Whatever happened to logic? And whatever happened to British simple arithmetic skills?

Who on earth, and in their right mind, could be persuaded into believing that adjusting our clocks, to gain an extra hour of balmy evening daylight, would not increase the amount of alcohol consumed?

And who, on earth, would believe someone telling them lives would be saved by such a change – when a simple histogram of road deaths, accurately produced for the past 82 years, clearly shows that, when Britain changes its time zone, road deaths begin a steep incline?

Either the British IQ has declined significantly over the years – or the education system no longer educates its pupils to ensure that, before anything else, they always think for themselves…