Is the World Getting Better?
A one-week seminar built around a gap: on most measures of human welfare — life expectancy, child mortality, extreme poverty, literacy, violence — the last two centuries have improved dramatically, and most people believe the opposite. Students work through the data, then through the reasons their perception of it is skewed, then through the challenges that genuinely aren't improving. Both optimism and pessimism are defensible here, and the deck is built so students can defend either.
Open the student page for this topicOne-Week Instructional Plan
The Year 1 seminar rhythm: data analysis Monday, small-group position work Tuesday, a two-day formal seminar Wednesday and Thursday, Friday reflection. This topic has an unusually large data section — budget Monday accordingly and be willing to skip charts rather than rush them.
Free Write, Then Work the Data
Free write (5 min): is the world getting better or worse? Students commit to an answer before seeing anything.
Data work — the progress charts. The deck moves through human-welfare measures, each with its own prompt:
- Life expectancy since 1950 — which countries gained most, and what caused so sharp a rise across so many at once?
- Child mortality — before 1880, what share of German children died before age five? Which country has improved most since 1960?
- Extreme poverty — roughly what share of people lived in it in 1981, and how much lower by 2017?
- Conflict deaths since 1946 — what's the trend, and which category of deaths has all but disappeared?
- Homicide — murder rates were far higher centuries ago. Which countries dropped most? Brazil and South Africa remain high — how much higher than the US, and is Brazil fairly called an anomaly?
- Smoking, literacy, air pollution — the smoking chart is the good one for causal reasoning: does it raise or lower your confidence that government ad campaigns did the work?
Then the turn: "Why would any of this progress surprise us?" News runs on bad news and clickbait because slow incremental change isn't a story; on social media, bad news travels further and outrage feeds the algorithm.
Then the second turn: "So does this mean everything is OK?" — CO2 emissions current and historical, temperature rise over a century, collapsing wild-animal populations, how much land humans now occupy, the McKinsey data on Black and White family wealth distributions, and The Economist's estimate that actual COVID deaths were roughly 21 million against 6 million reported.
Assign the readings — due before Tuesday, also linked in Canvas:
- Bad News Bias — The New York Times
- Why Bad News Dominates the Headlines — BBC
- Outrage Spreads Faster on Twitter: Evidence from 44 News Outlets — Harvard Business School
- Are You Stuck in the Sad Gap? — Hank Green (video)
Breakouts by Position
Mindful moment (5 min), then breakouts. Students group by optimist or pessimist and build the strongest version of their case from the deck's two closing arguments:
- The optimistic case: centuries of progress came from identifiable things — widespread education and literacy, the scientific method, industrial and information technology, the spread of democracy and open markets. Stay committed to those and we can handle almost anything; and if some falter, we adapt.
- The pessimistic case: past success doesn't guarantee future success. That progress ran on finite resources now growing scarce. We are demonstrably bad at collective action — no progress on global CO2, a pandemic that better coordination would have blunted — and we're too polarized and distrustful to fix things.
Open the Discussion
Mindful moment (5 min), then whole-group seminar on the deck's discussion questions:
- Did anything in the data surprise you? Were any measures much better or much worse than you expected?
- Do you think the world is getting better? Which measures would you point to?
- What does it even mean for the world to be "better"? Does human welfare matter more than other things?
- Are you optimistic or pessimistic about our ability to handle what's coming — and what's the best evidence against your own position?
The third question is the one that opens the week up. A student who says "better for humans, worse for everything else" has found the actual argument.
Before students leave: themes, lingering questions, and one new resource for Thursday.
Student-Sourced Evidence
Mindful moment (5 min), then students share what they found and log each other's links.
Thursday is the day for the measurement question the data raises but doesn't answer: who counts? The welfare charts are global averages, and averages hide the McKinsey wealth distributions and every other within-country gap. "Getting better on average" and "getting better for everyone" are different claims, and this is the day to separate them.
Score Your Participation
The four reflective questions, then the participation matrix. Students also use the participation rubric to score the week and explain the score.
The "did this change a pre-existing belief" question earns its keep on this topic — ask students to answer it against their Monday free write specifically.
Notes for the Guide
The deck's own teaching notes are unusually clear about what students should leave with, and they're worth holding to: real progress has been made; our perception of it is distorted, partly by media; enormous challenges remain, concentrated in the environment and in low-income countries; and both optimism and pessimism can be supported with evidence.
Don't Let It Become a Victory Lap
- The progress charts are persuasive and can tip the room into "everything is fine." The "So does this mean everything is OK?" slides exist to stop exactly that — don't skip them for time.
- Climate, biodiversity, land use, and within-country inequality are the genuine counterweight. A student who leaves thinking the environment is trending well has been mistaught.
- The COVID undercount is a good hinge: 6 million reported against roughly 21 million estimated. Ask who has an incentive to distort the number.
Where Discussion Tends to Go
- "Better for whom?" The most productive challenge to the data, and it's correct. Global averages hide distribution — the wealth-distribution slide is the evidence for it.
- Trend vs. level. "Child mortality has fallen sharply" and "child mortality is still too high" are both true. Students treat them as opposing claims.
- Media blame gets lazy. "The media lies" isn't what the readings say. The claim is narrower and more interesting: incremental improvement isn't newsworthy, and outrage travels.
Handle Pinker Honestly
- Much of this material descends from Steven Pinker's argument, and the deck notes he has serious critics who find his view too rose-tinted. The material sticks to the welfare data and to why perception diverges from it.
- Challenges to that framing should be welcomed, not managed. The Nation piece in the optional readings is there for exactly this.
- If a student argues the metrics themselves encode a particular idea of progress, that's a strong argument — give it room rather than redirecting to the charts.
Adapting This Topic
- Short on time: cut whole charts rather than rushing all of them. Life expectancy, extreme poverty, and homicide carry the argument on their own.
- Going deeper: the deck suggests an ambitious extension — why has the last couple of centuries been so different from all the ones before? That pulls in history, economics, and philosophy.
- Pairs well with: the social media censorship week, which shares the "why does false or negative content travel faster" evidence base.