A big part of the problem is allowing students to adjust their tests to the correct answer following an exam which inflates their test score. Thus, we have grade inflation. An "A" today is not what an "A" was in my school era. Therefore, the kids in the video might be straight "A" students today, but forty years ago would be "C" students - if that.

And that relates to history, politics, or current affairs how?

He/she would use "Civil War" because that's the commonly used term for it. If they don't know what the Civil War was, they sure as hell wouldn't know what the War of Southern Secession was.

No doubt. I think this is also why they are trying to get everyone to use debit cards instead of cash.

As for ignorance, why does the ignorant interviewer call it the "Civil War"? The southern states were not trying to take over the capital and make slavery universal. They just wanted to withdraw from the federal union. The "War of Southern Secession" or the "War Between the States" is a better description. The Russian Civl War was a civil war. The wars between Roman imperators were civil wars.

Are you a Zappa fan? If you are you've found another one in me. A real genius. When I started studying music composition, I couldn't afford a tutor but my music teacher told me to go to the library and take out the sheet music and read it while listening to the music. In those days they had 78 records, earphones and the sheet music and I spent many hours going through the Beethoven string quartets. I learned harmony and counterpoint that way before I ever entered college. I was amazed then, and still am how so much music could come out of only 4 instruments.

They're not willing to put out the effort to acquire the things they claim they want. The truth is, they don't want YOU to have the things they claim to want. It's preemptive theft; they don't have it, and they're making sure you can't get it either. Call them "commandments" if you must, but DON'T COVET; that's the root of the problem.

Hold on, I need a calculator to solve for X and Y

Soon, at the rate the educational system is dumbing down, if cash still exists, the screen will have to have pictures.

While it would be nice get the government out of education completely, that is not realistic in the foreseeable future. Maybe there is a way to wean people away from it. “Real spending per pupil ranges from a low of nearly $12,000 in the Phoenix area schools to a high of nearly $27,000 in the New York metro area.” That was in 2010. By 2012, DC was spending almost $30,000.

The Cato institute, as far back as 1983, pointed out the trend to lower quality education was alarming. And, by 2016, 10% of the college graduates thought television’s Judge Judy was on the U.S. Supreme Court. The dumbing down is complete.

Given the failure of government schools to educate, let’s try the market to supply the education. Simply issue to each parent a voucher equal to or less than the amount now spent by government for each student. Private schools would pop up, pay for the construction of the physical plant, pay taxes (yes, damn it, pay taxes) on the property, recruit and hire the needed personnel, and remove the entire burden from bureaucrats.

The parents then select the schools that actually teach what the parents want their children to learn, and the schools must compete to get students.

Sure, the government is still paying for the education — this removes a major objection by entrenched education people and those who love anything statist. At the same time, it opens vast new opportunities for parents to send their children to schools that can teach the children how to think and not indoctrinate them.

Who will oppose this? The list is long but starts with the teachers unions, all government school administrators, politicians supported by teachers and other unions, and anyone else now feasting at the trough of incompetency through education.

Americans tend to score higher than most other people on questions of general science, for example.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/...

"A slightly higher proportion of American adults qualify as scientifically literate than European or Japanese adults, but the truth is that no major industrial nation in the world today has a sufficient number of scientifically literate adults," he said. "We should take no pride in a finding that 70 percent of Americans cannot read and understand the science section of the New York Times."

(But 30% can -- and the NYT does have a science section, after all.)

Hope springs eternal.

That's funny!

The child was probably traumatized. No wonder colleges have to be "safe places" now.

It is so sad that what we do automatically, in our heads, these kids can't even do given a pencil and paper.

It starts with the actual refusal to learn. In some cases, when talking to 'teens in certain ghetto type slums, one cannot comprehend a word they say. It's as if they are limited to an Esperanto of twenty or so words. But that's a foisted stupidity. A truly stupid person is one who cannot learn, for whatever reason. They may actually be preferable to the ghetto person.

I used to work there and am sadly not in the least surprised by what I saw in this video.

To add insult to injury.. its just not TX... If a person is too ignorant to pass the test.. you just lower the score to pass:
http://www.heraldonline.com/latest-ne...

if that is the case we are perpetuating ignorance since their teachers must be ignorant, however, i think stupid. it had to start somewhere.

If they are taught and do not absorb they are stupid. If they are never taught, they are ignorant.

The same future voters that don't know who they will vote for until they go into the voting booth... The same ones that Bernie Sanders brings in by the dozen promising more free stuff.

I used to love doing your second example all the time. But retailers have caught on that they can save so much money by hiring an idiot with minimal money cognizance and put in a good computer system. Then they train them to just put in the total received and the computer will tell them exactly what to return to the customer (if the register doesn't do it itself). I have seen the screen that said "1 ten dollar bill, 1 nickel, 3 pennies change". Real shame, really, that this is what the educational system has come to.

This is not about free education. It's about society's progressive dumbing-down, and the failure of schools to deliver even the most basic foundation of awareness of the country in which students are growing up.

What surprised me is that I'm not American, I have only spent 6 months total in the USA in the last 30 years, but I knew a lot more than those students.

Admittedly, I bombed out on the actual year of the US Declaration of Independence (though I knew it was late 18th century), and bombed out even worse on the pop culture questions at the end.