New research reports that, thanks to smartphones, kids are smarter today than their ancestors ever were. “Technology,” the article said, “is expanding the American IQ.”

Psychologist Steven Pinker says, “Progress is a fact… we are smarter, richer, and healthier than our ancestors. This is not a matter of optimism; it is a matter of looking at the data.”

The research went on to say that, by modern standards, an average American born in 1910 would have a modern-day IQ of around 67. Which is below the threshold for intellectual disability.

A hundred years ago, according to research, kids were stupid.

Which is absolutely true. Take my grandmother. Bless her heart. A hundred years ago, as a little girl, she would awake every wintery morning to build the family fire with kindling and newspaper. She did this without help. By herself.

What a low IQ.

Next, she would light a kerosene lantern before going outside to feed and water the animals and collect eggs in the henhouse. Pa gave her this job when she was 7. She’d never missed a day of work, except when she had scarlet fever and diphtheria. What a dolt.

She was also responsible for gathering laundry on Fridays. During the wintertime, laundry hung on the line, frozen stiff. It froze your clothes into weirdly rigid shapes, but somehow, because of science, the cold air actually freeze-dried them. Then you collected the board-like clothing and hung them near the fire to soften. How stupid.

After a morning of chores, it was time for school. That’s when the real work began.

Firstly, the girl was responsible for her little brother and her sister on the walk. She was the oldest girl, which meant she was practically a second mother.

School was four miles away. So, not that far. Heck, she walked six miles just going to town. Seven miles whenever Mama sent her to the post office for packages. She really DID have to walk through rain and snow. How idiotic.

When she arrived at the one-room schoolhouse, she was not simply a student, but also Teacher’s Little Helper. She was responsible for tending the potbelly stove; in charge of accompanying littler kids to the lavatory; in charge of correcting essays with red pencil; in charge of disciplining rowdy children.

In addition, she studied what other students her age studied back in those days. She learned Latin, some Greek, the occasional French or German. How foolish.

Also, she read the poets, both Romantic and Victorian. Byron, Milton, Southey. American writers, too. Longfellow, Irving, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. My grandmother not only read it, but had the vocabulary to appreciate it.

The average American born in 1910 had a vocabulary of 100,000 words. Today’s student, with its much higher IQ, uses a daily vocabulary of 3,000 basic words.

Also, the students memorized long soliloquies from Shakespeare. And understood them.

“If music be the food of love, play on.
“Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
“The appetite may sicken and so die.
“That strain again! It had a dying fall…”

They read Greek and Roman classics. The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid. Studied world history, from Mesopotamia to Magellan. And national history, analyzing speeches made by Daniel Webster, Patrick Henry, and memorizing the oratorical works of Thomas Jefferson. What numbskulls.

When school was over, the little girl walked back home. Then, it was more work. She helped Mama with supper. She chopped, boiled, baked, and fried. Nobody helped her. After supper, she darned socks, sewed nine-patch quilts, and mended Pa’s shirts.

At bedtime, she read for pleasure by kerosene lantern. She loved Louisa May Alcott, “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” or “Anne of Green Gables.” She loved Tennyson, and Elizabeth Barret Browning.

Poems like:

“Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
“Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
“The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
“They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
“And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then?
“Who’s sorry for a gnat… or a girl?”

Yes. It really is too bad my grandmother never had a smartphone. She might have actually made something of herself.