The Flynn effect is the sustained rise in IQ test scores across generations in the twentieth century — about three points per decade in dozens of countries. James Flynn discovered it by noticing that test publishers kept restandardizing norms downward to keep the average at 100.
What actually improved
Gains clustered in abstract reasoning: Raven's Progressive Matrices, similarities tests ("how are dawn and dusk alike?" at a higher level than "both times of day"). School-taught vocabulary and arithmetic barely moved. The improvement is not raw brain hardware; it is comfort with abstraction — what Flynn called learning to see through scientific spectacles: classification, hypothetical reasoning, and concepts detached from immediate experience.
Alexander Luria's Uzbekistan studies showed premodern villagers thinking concretely (grouping yarn by use, not color category); exposure to modern collective work shifted people toward categorical abstraction. The Flynn effect is that transition at civilizational scale.
Education mismatch
Flynn found near-zero correlation between college GPA and a test of broad conceptual reasoning across disciplines. Biology and English majors failed questions outside their silo; business majors did worst. Universities teach narrow critical competence, not transferable reasoning tools — Fermi estimation, statistical literacy, detecting circular logic.
Modern jobs demand knowledge transfer; schools still often train narrow vocational content. Flynn argued students need "habits of mind that allow them to dance across disciplines" before (or instead of) arcane specialization.