Very true. However, every day I run into college-educated folk that would have had trouble with some of those questions. If a person never studies a subject (in school or simply as a self-motivated seeker of truth), then he or she will remain ignorant.
One year, the incoming freshman of a well-known college were given blank a map of the state they were in and asked to put an “X” where they were. Most could not; some with the excuse that they had come in by airplane.
I am a control freak and need to know where I am and have a photo image of where things fit. Trusting kids who are dependent on parents for all (many don’t know how to change a lightbulb) are very unprepared for adult life. With all the info out there, I can understand the need for selective memory. Not once have I needed to use, or know that I was using a principle of, algebra. :)
I have had conversations with several recent university graduates in this area and I have yet to find one who could pass the history test to get INTO high school in my era (I am 66) don’t even talk about passing the FINALS TO GRADUATE high school, they probably couldn’t score twenty percent.
Worse yet, when talking to a candidate who was running in the primary for state superintendent of education in SC I mentioned that some recent graduates can’t even tell me what country the colonies went to war against to gain independence and form the United States of America. Are you ready for her answer to me? “I am an English major, not a history major”.
In my day it was not a question of what your major was, you studied American history, your state history, World history, Geography, Civics, the Constitution, the functions of all three branches of government, all this began in grade school and continued through high school. We studied the constitution in detail including each amendment and how it affected our lives. We wrote essays on how a bill went through congress and the ways in which a bill could be vetoed and how a veto could be overridden. We studied every American president, every war, every major piece of national legislation, treaties etc., we studied the Magna Charta and how our law evolved from English common law, we knew what happened at the Battle of Hastings and the date it happened. I don’t know how much I could remember on an exam now, certainly not all of it but if I could do as well as I did back then I could probably pass the exam for a BA in history right now just based on what I learned in public school.
Yes, Leno is probably picking the least knowledgeable but I would wager that had he picked the top twenty percent the results would still be pathetic.
What I find equally as frightening as the lack of knowledge of history is the careless and unknowing use of the English language by people who should know better. No one of us uses perfect grammar but it is ridiculous to see how many don’t have a clue about there, their and they’re or to, two and too or you’re, your and yours or whose and who’s or its and it’s, the list goes on, very few under fifty years old seem to have a clue about pronoun usage, apostrophes are used on plurals and dropped from possessives where they belong and added to possessives where they DON’T belong. Apparently most English TEACHERS are no longer qualified if we are to judge by the students they send out to be “journalists”.