Школьники по всему миру теряют способность читать и понимать прочитанное

Overview

The video is a commentary on the latest PISA results (presented as PISA 2025 data), arguing that basic academic competencies—especially reading and reading comprehension—are worsening among 15-year-olds worldwide. The speaker claims this decline is not mainly caused by COVID-19 or AI, but instead reflects long-running structural problems in education and children’s learning conditions.

Main claims and findings from the PISA results

• Overall deterioration continues and looks worse than the prior cycle. The speaker says performance is declining across reading, mathematics, and (to a lesser extent) natural sciences, with the sharpest problems in reading comprehension.

• The decline predates COVID and is longstanding.

  • The speaker claims the downward trend is visible from the early-to-mid 2010s.
  • Many countries began falling before the pandemic.
  • COVID is framed as an accelerator, not the original cause.

• Geographic / pattern highlights

  • Europe is described as showing “catastrophic” declines, especially in Northern Europe (with the speaker highlighting Scandinavia as especially affected).
  • Asian education leaders remain high, though even they show small declines or instability rather than a catastrophic collapse.
  • Examples mentioned include top performers clustered around China’s main provinces, as well as Singapore, Macau/Taiwan, and others.
  • Among Europe, the speaker repeatedly points to Estonia as a strong outlier.

What PISA is measuring (speaker’s framing)

The speaker emphasizes that PISA is not about trivia or “school memorization,” but about basic competencies applied to real contexts, including:

• Reading comprehension: understanding texts and answering questions based on them.
• Basic mathematics: applying math to practical problems.
• Scientific literacy: understanding everyday aspects of how the natural world works.

To counter claims that PISA is “too complex,” the speaker discusses example question styles, such as:

• reading a scenario and interpreting forum-like text,
• everyday proportional-math problems,
• practical comparisons using a calculator.

The speaker argues these tasks are conceptually elementary, yet many students still fail.

Evidence from performance levels

The speaker highlights worsening outcomes at the lowest proficiency tiers:

• The share of students who fail to reach certain baseline levels is said to be increasing.
• The decline is described as widespread deterioration rather than isolated outliers: average performance drops, and the weakest group grows.

Main proposed causes (analysis/commentary)

The speaker argues that multiple factors likely interact, but stresses two central drivers:

1) Digital media / smartphoneization and the “fast reward” learning effect

The speaker claims digital media trains children toward high-speed, high-stimulation content, reducing tolerance for long-form reading and sustained concentration. The argument is that this alters attention/reward processing and therefore undermines skills that require persistence—such as reading long texts or solving multi-step problems.

2) Changes in education goals and methods (moving away from strong foundational knowledge)

The speaker criticizes “progressive” or competency-first approaches that, in his view:

• de-emphasize solid subject knowledge,
• over-rely on broad skills,
• lean toward learning through play and softer structuring.

He claims that competencies can’t fully develop without a knowledge base, because real application depends on underlying facts, vocabulary, and conceptual foundations.

Comparison of education approaches: “Europe vs Asia”

The speaker contrasts:

• England / Scotland / Wales and Northern Europe
• with Asian systems

He portrays Asian systems as:

• more tightly specified (clear curriculum content—what students must know),
• more sequential (simple → complex progression),
• supported by exam checkpoints and structured progression,
• grounded in strong teacher practice, including coaching and lesson study.

He portrays Scandinavian/Northern European systems as:

• less prescriptive,
• more focused on well-being and interest,
• less academically dense, which (in his view) leads to weaker durable foundational competence.

Other contributing factors mentioned

• School engagement and motivation decline: less perseverance and lower effort during testing. The speaker notes reported low effort rises, though not enough to fully explain the total decline.
• Classroom learning environment issues in parts of Europe: discipline problems, bullying, and teacher shortages—claimed to correlate with worse reading outcomes.
• Absenteeism after COVID: improved attendance policies may not fix learning if motivation and learning relevance were harmed.
• Family factors: children with more parent involvement in school tend to perform better on PISA, though the speaker argues this doesn’t fully account for the global trend.
• AI not treated as primary cause: the decline is presented as existing before widespread AI adoption.

Bottom-line conclusion

The speaker concludes that education systems are shifting toward pleasure/reduced effort and weaker foundations, leaving students increasingly unable to perform baseline literacy and basic math tasks. He warns that future failures will compound if children cannot read and understand texts, since reading is portrayed as the gateway for learning across subjects.

He ends by arguing for a solution centered on restoring basic academic foundations (not necessarily “intensification for its own sake”), along with effective learning practices.

Presenters / contributors

• No other presenters or contributors are named in the subtitles.
• The video features a single main speaker addressing the audience during a live weekly stream.