Ramifications of the OECD “Survey of Adult Skills”

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a unique forum representing 37 democracies that collaborate to develop policies to promote sustainable economic growth. Earlier this month, the OECD released a new study, “Survey of Adult Skills”,   which arrived at the startling conclusion that nearly 20% of people between the ages of 16 and 65 were unable to perform better in Reading and Mathematics than children who had just completed primary school.

The survey, typically carried out once in a decade, tested over 150,000 adults across 31 (primarily developed) OECD countries, in literacy, numeracy and elementary problem solving, attempting to gauge if respondents had the wherewithal to attain and retain a job and get ahead in the real world. To give examples, people were tested to check if they could decipher basic instructions (e.g. the warnings on a packet of medicine), or elementary mensuration (e.g. how many square feet of wall paper they would require for a room). More advanced testing involved, by way of example, checking the conclusions drawn from verbal analysis and inference from charts which might be found in a popular current affairs magazine.

Japan, the Nordic countries and the UK, did well both in literacy and numeracy skills. In contrast, the United States placed below average in both.

What is particularly alarming, however, is that when it comes to literacy skills, countries with falling scores outnumber those who are making progress. This, despite the fact that many more people are completing secondary school and even earning college degrees. In many countries, the gap between the most and least skilled people is widening dramatically.

Even when you correct for immigration (non-native speakers may not score well) and ageing populations (research suggests that both literacy and numeracy skills peak at age 30 and then decline gradually) there is no escaping the fact that literacy skills are falling in a large number of OECD countries. Adult pre-occupation with social media, and the consumption of byte-sized information probably play a role in this deterioration as well.

Which begs the question: What about India? While the country was not included in the aforementioned survey, it is difficult to imagine India outscoring a nation like the United States, Italy, Portugal and Chile, the nations which consistently scored lower than all the others. The lack of a common language as a medium of instruction, a woefully uneven standard of primary and middle-school education, and a system based on credentialing rather than learning, make functioning literacy and even practical numeracy persistent challenges in the workplace.

The leading cause of these issues is the inability and unwillingness to read as a result of the lack of access to stimulating material, and the irrelevance which naturally follows from a pedagogy which prefers classroom instruction above all else. Coupled with the deleterious impact of social media on attention and retention skills, reading – as a habit, critical skill, and engine of knowledge – is being marginalised.

This is a recipe for disaster; if we attempt to distil the basic benefits of reading:

• It is a thought starter: it forces us to think.
• It is a concentration engine: it helps us to retain information and knowledge.
• It is a focus magnet: it teaches us to be attentive and critical.
• It is a training tool: it helps us to clarify our thinking and become articulate speakers and writers.

Without reading, we will lose many, if not all, of our critical and creative faculties.

Many promote the idea that in the evolving world of Large Language Models like Chat GPT and others, reading and other forms of language skills will become redundant. But in this they are both deluded and disingenuous. As the engines of automation and artificial intelligence continue to offer the promise of alleviating the burden of verbal and numerical tasks, it will become even more necessary for us to be wiling and competent “checkers” if we are not to become the hapless slaves of these mechanised “creators”.