Despite the wall-to-wall coverage of the damage from Hurricane Katrina, nearly one-third of young Americans [ages 18-24] recently polled couldn't locate Louisiana on a map and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi.
Link.
Such stories are commonplace, but none of them aim fault at the public schools. So why should we blame the public schools? Because 90% of school children attend them. Moreover, the public schools claim to be the building block of America and the provider of all child things--not just education, but daycare, breakfasts and lunches, recreation. So when mass idiocy (and anything else negative or positive, incidentally, given the public schools' incredibly-broad reach) shows its face in America's populace, it seems fair to lay the blame with the public schools. They'll dodge the blame, of course, and get away with it, since they're so firmly ensconced in every locale that rooting them out would be like rooting out every blade of grass in a community, but we can at least ask reasonable questions like, "What are you teaching?"
