<p>Seriously, what James Flynn focused on in his talk was the changes our culture has confronted and kinds of skill we exercise these days.</p>
<p>“We’ve gone from people who confronted a concrete world…to people who confront a very complex world…in which we’ve had to develop new habit of mind, and those include clothing that world with classification, introducing abstractions that we try to make logically consistent and also taking the hypothetical seriously.”</p>
<p>There’s a lot more to his talk but I can’t synopsize it well enough to try it here.</p>
<p>It put me in mind of a commencement address (paraphrased here from memory) given by Neil deGrasse Tyson in which he talks about two employment candidates at on-campus interviews. Each is asked the height of the building outside the window. The first says, “I’ve memorized the height of each building so I can tell you precisely. 178 feet.” The second says, “Hold on a second,” runs outside, measures the building’s shadow, measures his own shadow, extrapolates from his height , comes back and says, “Around 180 feet.” NdT said although the second answer was less precise he’d rather hire the second because s/he was able to think flexibly and arrive at the solution.</p>
<p>The Harvard exam contained very few questions that required higher-order problem solving. The history and geography were almost purely regurgitation of memorized material.</p>