Would you pass PISA? The uncomfortable question

If adults took PISA: failing in self-criticism

Could you tell a circumference from a circle? Explain the fundamental theorem of integral calculus? Do a semantic, syntactic or rhetorical analysis of a poem by Cavafy? The PISA results are bad news that is hard to defend socially. The question almost nobody asks is whether the grader shouldn't also take a look at home.

The diagnosis is unanimous: education is getting worse, the level is dropping, young people are sinking. And yet hardly anyone has done the reverse exercise: what grade would the adult population get sitting in front of the same test. That's when the narrative starts to shake.

What PISA really evaluates and what it measures poorly

The test is limited to reading, mathematical and scientific literacy. Little more. Those who claim that knowing how to read is enough to pass comfortably are partly right: the exam doesn't ask about the list of Visigothic kings. The problem appears when it is verified that a good part of adults haven't finished a book as dense as Proust, Joyce or Dostoevsky in twenty years. That detail should considerably lower the tone of apocalyptic diagnoses about teenagers.

Adults work, they don't study five days a week

The most solid argument wielded is also the most obvious: adults don't go to class. They work, take care of children or parents —often both— and keep their heads busy with paperwork and bureaucracy. It would be strange if the adult average surpassed that of students. That it came close, even more so. It's not an excuse: it's context.

The spotlight on teachers

The idea floats of subjecting teachers to the same exam, with a separation between civil servants and non-civil servants, and even the figure is thrown out that 90% would fail a test on the subject they teach. There is no data to support it, only suspicion. Still, the question has merit: why is evaluation always applied to the student and never to the whole chain.

In the background, an entire generation —those born between 1970 and 1990— turned simultaneously into scapegoat and suspect. And the textbook anecdote: the daughter who hasn't read the Odyssey or the Iliad because no books are read in her school. It may be true. It may also be that her father hasn't peine them either.

In the end, the conclusion is the usual one: those who fail are others. What a coincidence that we have never taken the exam ourselves.