The OECD released PISA 2025 last Tuesday, the world's largest educational assessment, with 760,000 fifteen-year-old students evaluated across 91 countries. The results present a concerning picture: the OECD country averages in reading, mathematics, and science are the lowest since the beginning of the series in 2000, with a loss equivalent to a year and a half of learning in reading.
Brazil appears stagnant in the results, but at least it did not regress, unlike some neighboring countries. The pandemic, often cited as the cause of the decline, is ruled out by Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's Director for Education, who points out that the educational decline began in 2012, coinciding with the popularization of smartphones and social media among teenagers.
The report indicates that students report classmates distracted by screens during most of their classes. Reading for pleasure is declining worldwide, being replaced by social media feeds, which, according to the article, make the brain passive, uncritical, and addicted to quick, superficial content.
