France and Germany among countries with low Pisa scores, which show how well 15-year-olds use school learning in life

While the UK bucked the trend, results on the continent continued a slide that began in 2018. In France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, the proportion of 15-year-olds lacking basic functional literacy and maths skills rose to nearly one in three.

  • reallykindasorta@slrpnk.netEnglish
    21·
    1 month ago

    That’s a lot of information, I will take a closer look when I have time. I’m not convinced by the op layman article linked but I’ll take a look at the studies you outline too. I do believe motivation and attention are closely linked so motivation is likely a factor in the decline we’re seeing in attention capacity, but that doesn’t erase the decline. There is evidence of impact on the brain in a couple of the studies I linked. I haven’t seen any research claiming it’s permanent by the way. Most scientific categories (motivation and attention span included) aren’t rigorously distinct phenomena, they’re just useful for imperfectly generalizing/modeling things we’ve identified as important. Being able to give things your sustained attention is important for a lot of things that we value. Things that limit our ability to do so are worrying (including lack of motivation).

    • supersquirrel@lemmy.caEnglish
      41·
      1 month ago

      I do believe motivation and attention are closely linked so motivation is likely a factor in the decline we’re seeing in attention capacity

      You misunderstand this, the link to motivation has to do with how salient a particular thing is to you overrides any abstracted idea of attention span not that people “aren’t motivated enough” in general which is nonsense moralizing.