The headlines are practically writing themselves. The 2025 PISA results are in, and reading and mathematics performance has declined sharply across the OECD. The panic is palpable. Educators are wringing their hands, politicians are demanding reform, and op-eds are blaming TikTok and lazy parenting.
But you’ve probably noticed something feels off about this narrative. We are watching an entire generation quietly go on strike against a system that is actively lying to them.
We look at the declining test scores and see a failure of pedagogy. We think the kids are getting dumber. But what if they aren’t? What if this isn’t an academic failure, but a ruthless, rational market correction?
Consider the world we are handing them. We demand higher educational standards to maintain economic competitiveness, while simultaneously deploying an AI infrastructure that completely devalues the exact skills being tested. Why would a 15-year-old spend hundreds of hours memorizing historical dates or perfecting essay structures when an AI can do it in three seconds for free?
You don’t practice cursive when the world has already invented the keyboard.
Look at the data from the ground level. Over at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, the entrance exam hasn’t changed in difficulty since the 1960s. Back then, 80% of students passed. Today? Only 20% pass. The test didn’t get harder. The students didn’t lose brain capacity. The incentive structure shifted. The reward for rote mastery simply isn’t what it used to be.
And who can blame them? AI already writes most of the articles you read, is doing math at the level of the best human mathematicians, and is writing a massive chunk of the code running our infrastructure. The students see this. They aren’t failing the test; they are divesting from skills with diminishing economic returns.
The OECD report even notes that students who use AI for schoolwork attain lower scores than those who don’t. They present this as a warning. But it’s actually an admission of defeat. The PISA test is measuring a dying skillset. The kids using AI are preparing for the actual economy.
There is a dark, existential friction at play here. Older generations are judging youth by obsolete meritocratic metrics, while the youth are silently rebelling against a broken promise. As one commenter perfectly summarized the current dynamic: “With later and later retirement dates, it’s important that the younger generations are easier to compete with.”
We are trying to force them to compete in a game we already rigged. They are simply refusing to play.
The smartest students aren’t the ones answering the questions; they’re the ones questioning the value of the test.
If we want to fix this, we don’t need stricter tests or more homework. We need to stop lying to our kids about what matters. We need to evaluate our own metrics for success and ask if they are already obsolete. The PISA decline isn’t a tragedy. It’s a wake-up call. The market is correcting, and the kids are way ahead of us.
FAQ
Q: Isn't this just an excuse for kids being lazy and addicted to screens?
A: No, it's a rational economic response. If a skill takes 10,000 hours to master but becomes obsolete overnight due to AI, investing time in it is a bad ROI. They aren't lazy; they're pragmatic.
Q: What should schools actually be teaching then?
A: Stop teaching them to be calculators and encyclopedias. Teach them to be prompt engineers, critical thinkers, and system architects. The goal isn't to know the answer, but to know how to ask the right question.
Q: Should we just abolish PISA testing entirely?
A: Yes. PISA measures 20th-century skills in a 21st-century economy. It's like testing a pilot on how fast they can run to the cockpit. It's obsolete.