Evidence that rising population intelligence is impacting in formal education

Consensus is growing that rising IQ scores at least partly reflect rising population intelligence. However, there is no apparent impact in formal education, the one real world domain where it should be strongly and obviously impacting. Teachers evidently are not reporting brighter children. There is only one relevant formal study, however, which found that most Australian high school teachers surveyed did not perceive that students became brighter between 1979 and 1999. The present study investigated several possible reasons why; declining motivation in high school students masking rising intelligence, too short a time span or the wrong nation examined. The study was replicated in Australian primary school teachers who had been teaching for 20 or 30 years and in Singapore and Korea, where the environmental improvements thought to raise IQ have happened mainly in the last 40 years. Also, these nations lack the West's grave classroom motivation problems. Most Australian primary teachers did not perceive brighter children even over 30 years, but most in the two Asian nations did, particularly those in Singapore. General intelligence may have largely stopped rising in Western nations decades ago while visuospatial ability has been increasing, which with test sophistication has been pushing up IQ scores slightly. When the environmental improvements occur rapidly, teachers readily note brighter children. (C) 2002 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.