alt Hacker NewsIt being the first time a generation scored worse surprises me because it has been pretty obvious in the UK at least that the syllabus for children has been systematically and progressively dumbed down for at least the last 30 years.
One concrete example I remember is in sixth form in the UK when I was there, in order to address poor example results in maths, they replaced Core Maths 1-6 with Pure Maths 1-6, the 6 modules of the latter only containing the material from the first 4 modules of the former
1. Parents whine and bitch every time their precious little baby is expected to do any actual work.
2. Governments dumb down education programs. Some do it to massage the statistics and make education look good, others do it because they honestly think that's how you help teachers give more attention to low-performing students.
The effect is the widening "education gap" - the difference between kids whose parents sign them up for extracurricular activities, and the ipad kids.