Declining Western PISA Scores Are Caused by Progressive Education Policies Abolishing Meritocracy and Deep Reading
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "Our Children Are Getting Dumber | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." September 16, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
The author argues that kids in Western countries are getting less smart—not because of the pandemic or unequal resources, but because schools got rid of meritocracy, pushed screens over books, and let 'inclusive' teaching methods water down real learning. Meanwhile, Asian countries that still emphasize rigorous, merit-based education are pulling ahead, and Western leaders are too distracted by culture-war issues to notice or fix the problem.
Conclusion
The decline in Western children's academic performance (as shown in PISA results), especially in reading and critical thinking, is primarily caused by progressive education policies—particularly the abolition of meritocracy, the technologization of classrooms, and the replacement of deep reading with superficial digital content—rather than by the pandemic or by resource inequality, and this decline poses a serious long-term economic and geopolitical threat to the West.
Premises
- PISA reports show the US and Europe experiencing ongoing declines in math and reading performance, while East Asian countries (Singapore, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan) continue to improve.
- The pandemic can no longer explain the decline since six years have passed with no other lingering pandemic effects, yet scores keep falling.
- The achievement gap between privileged and disadvantaged students has disappeared not because disadvantaged students improved, but because privileged students have also declined, undermining the Left's resource-inequality explanation.
- Deep, long-form reading builds critical thinking and analytical capacity in a way that other forms of information consumption do not.
- Children today read constantly (texts, tweets, social posts) but this type of reading does not provide the cognitive benefits of long-form reading.
- The abolition of meritocracy in schools, driven by progressive policy and unopposed by a timid political Right, has directly contributed to declining intellectual standards.
- Political and educational leaders are distracted by other priorities (e.g., identity politics/pronoun policies) instead of addressing this educational crisis.
Assumptions
- PISA scores are a valid and sufficient measure of overall student intelligence or educational quality.
- The correlation between the timeline of pandemic recovery and continued score decline implies causation is elsewhere, specifically in policy choices.
- Progressive educational policies (opposing meritocracy, promoting inclusivity, reducing rigor) are inherently linked to declining academic outcomes, rather than other systemic factors (funding, teacher shortages, socioeconomic shifts, technology use broadly).
- Long-form reading has a uniquely irreplaceable cognitive benefit that cannot be substituted by other forms of learning or technology.
- The political Right's failure to oppose these policies is due to electoral cowardice rather than other strategic or ideological reasons.
- Eastern countries' improved performance stems from different, presumably more meritocracy-based educational approaches, rather than other cultural, economic, or systemic factors.