To quote David McCullough...”Americans have become historically illiterate.”
There was a decent segment on 60 minutes (accidentally clicked that channel)discussing how poorly educated each generation of Americans has become especially with their own history.
To paraphrase one comment he made...A student from a Midwestern university had approached him after one of his lectures and told him that she was unaware (until his lecture) that the 13 colonies were on the East coast.
My 3rd grader knows this information and can name about 3/4 of them from memory and can pick them all out on map.
Obama recently said there was ONE British colony in America.
I watched the same McCullough comment. The thing is...kids are sitting there and memorizing everything to get through high school, then repeat the same exercise to get through college. By going in the direction of memorizing...you never connect the dots and understand how one act led to another. It’s just a memory game to get you by.
This also explains why the global warming mafia is able to easily convince people of various things. And why economic dimwits appear on some national TV episode and give bogus information about how the economy really works.