Cultural decline affecting the elites
Italy is at a standstill and nothing is being done to stop its cultural collapse
For some years now, there has been a growing number of political scientists who believe that it would be a mistake to attribute 'the decline of liberal democracy to ignorance'. The problems would be deeper: they are structural and cultural. The main one would lie in the malfunctioning of elites and institutions, in the way they respond (or fail to respond) to the challenges and expectations of concrete people, in the way power and legitimacy are managed. This diagnosis, which various authors articulate, would shift the cause of the crisis of liberal democracies from the 'ignorant masses' to failures in the behaviour of elites and in their institutional culture.
The latest data from the Survey of Adult Skills (Piacc), the OECD's periodic report on literacy, mathematical and problem solving skills in adults between 16 and 65 years of age, say that 35% of countrymen between 16 and 35 years of age are functionally illiterate. Italy is last in Europe for the percentage of university graduates and has the lowest number of graduates in the STEM area. We are only concerned, in the media, with the fact that we cannot read a minimally complex text (functional illiteracy), and that these people are also poor in mathematics and very poor in problem solving tests. Italy has been going through a political-institutional crisis for decades, and lives in perpetual economic stagnation, so these cultural delays are often blamed for the lack of social dynamism.
They leave out very interesting aspects concerning the way in which countries with different investments in training and skill levels manage to intercept local socio-economic dynamics or not. Italy appears to be right at the pole, not least because between the first and second cycles the percentage of functional illiterates has increased by 9% (from 26 to 35) and remains at 32% in numeracy. So nothing is being done to stop the country's cultural collapse.
A fact that no one has noticed is that Italy, in the tasks administered, stands out not only for a high amount of functional and mathematical illiteracy (Level 1 and below of the OECD tables), but also for the scarcity of people in Levels 4 and 5, in literacy, mathematical skills and problem solving. The cultural elites in Italy, those with skills for synthesis and critical evaluation of complex information or understanding of advanced mathematical and computer concepts are in the 5% range. As in Poland and Portugal. In other industrialised countries they range between 15% (USA and UK) and 25% (Japan and Scandinavian countries).
Intelligence psychologist Heiner Rindermann (Cognitive Capitalism, reviewed on these pages) conducted an extensive demographic study on cognitive abilities in the population 16-65 years old on the Western and Asian scales, finding that countries that excel in complex cognitive abilities (levels 4 and 5) are also those that have a high GDP, obtain more patents, Nobel prizes, have more efficient institutions, are less violent, less infectious diseases, etc. In the most developed Asian countries, growth in cognitive performance is observed to be causally significantly and positively correlated with investment in education and improved civic conditions.
