Going to hell in a handbasket...

If one is to be a card-carrying member of the older generation, it is necessary to bemoan the various inadequacies of the younger generation. A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education does that quite well:

I recently asked my class of 16 freshmen and sophomores, many of whom had graduated in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes and had dazzling SAT scores, how many had heard the word "rendition." Not one hand went up... I was dumbstruck. Finally one hand went up, and the student sheepishly asked if rendition had anything to do with a version of a movie or a play... Nearly half of a recent class could not name a single country that bordered Israel. In an introductory journalism class, 11 of 18 students could not name what country Kabul was in, although we have been at war there for half a decade... Some students thought that Islam was the principal religion of South America, that Roe v. Wade was about slavery... that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1975. You get the picture, and it isn't pretty...

Perhaps it has always been thus (but I don't think so...). I am reminded of the video of the Aussie journalist interviewing American "people on the street" and asking them "When did the 9/11 attack occur" and people answering "October"...