Because TIMSS says so December 21, 2020 The writer is an independent education researcher and consultant. She has a PhD in Education from Michigan State University. In 2019, somewhere in Pakistan a group of fourth graders was shown a picture depicting a scene in a desert. It had a camel walking through the sand, a reptile perched on a rock, a spider on a cactus and a bug on a plant, with the sun and some clouds in the sky above a mountain range rising in the background. Students were asked to name two living and two non-living things in the picture. Only 34 percent of them were able to answer the question correctly.