New Pisa study: Anyone who can read this text has a clear advantage

Anyone who can read has a clear advantage. A somewhat old-fashioned saying that made you want to hit the ceiling when you were a teenager. For example, when teachers mocked you with this unfunny sentence without being asked because you didn't immediately understand the stupid word problem: Well, there's probably something to it. In any case, this sentence needs to be repeated again in light of the latest PISA results.

The large international comparative study has found that young people in Germany are becoming less and less able to read. To put it more specifically, you simply don't feel like slogging through long texts anymore, whereby "long" is not defined, but could roughly mean: anything longer than a social media feed.

Because Tiktok and the like, which is also a finding, ruin the willingness to make an effort to get involved with more complex information. At least the researchers draw a possible connection between a lot of time spent on the smartphone and little curiosity to form one's own opinion. What's more, young people are becoming increasingly easier to mislead. To put it bluntly, they believe what an algorithm or perhaps an AI is serving them.

The taz is an independent, left-wing and opinionated daily newspaper. We have been arguing in our comments, essays and debate texts since the taz was founded in 1979. We often cannot and do not want to agree on an opinion. That's why you'll find some completely opposing positions here - all part of the very broad left-wing spectrum of opinions.

Now it's boring to accuse young people of not being willing to make an effort. What generation of adults hasn’t done that?

Luckily, it's not the young people's fault at all. It is the adults who have not dealt with the social media issue for far too long. Age limit yes or no? Or ban smartphones from the schoolyard completely? Education Minister Karin Prien (CDU) finally wants to present a draft law in the fall. Until then, every parents' evening muddles along, every school does as it thinks - and some school management simply doesn't think about it at all, because that's also true: there is still a lot of catching up to do in teacher training, especially in the area of ​​media literacy. Minister Prien emphasized this again on Tuesday.

In light of the election results in Saxony-Anhalt, this must be particularly alarming. It is well known that the right's potential for hate speech, especially on social media, is enormous and unfortunately also extremely successful - AfD election winner Ulrich Siegmund served his audience primarily on Tiktok. If the AfD comes to power in Saxony-Anhalt, it has already announced that it will reform the curricula. The aim is “the development of a stable national identity”. Less National Socialism, more Bismarck, something like that. Let anyone who can read well.