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This must be why colleges at all levels are starting remedial classes for high-school graduates just to get them up to the level where they can take beginning 100 series college classes.

It must be also why there is such a high drop-out rate in our high-schools.

It must be why they can't add, subtract, multiply or divide.

It must be why when working in a fast, foods joint, they can't count back change.

It must be why many of them can't write cursive, or if they do, it is not readable.

It must be why many of them can't tell time from an analog clock.

I know, they are so damn smart!

You are pointing out a truth. It is interesting why IQ’s are rising. One observation being they are paper and pencil tasks. Are people merely getting used to paper and pencil tasks? Intelligence has been defined as the ability to think under pressure. Has pressure increased over the last 100 years and people have adapted? Inresesting.

Sad, so sad, yet so true!

And those IQ tests were taken with a non-mechanical lead pencil on actual, non-recycled paper, without the assistance of a calculator. Long ago, when my chronological age (factored into the Intelligence Quotient) was much less, my quotient was pretty high. I'll tell you what: I'd give my eye teeth to have the kind of smarts my illiterate-to-semi-literate immigrant grandparents had! They had so much more! They knew from personal experience; the wisdom of their elders; their Faith, passed from generation to generation; read to them and spoken to them by their parish priests, reenacted in festivals and processions to teach and unite the faithful. Humility. Humility to realize that God, life, and the world were bigger than they were. Mine were the ones who were looked down on because of their poverty, illiteracy, and the place they came from. Here they came and banded together because they had the sense to realize that people needed one another, and needed God. They had compassion for others, coming from the common experiences of pain and suffering that were part of their everyday lives. No written test can measure these.
If we, with all our technology don't realize that, the numbers mean nothing. Fact is, our grandparents were far wiser in their poverty, humiliation and hardship than most of us will ever be.