Are ignorance and a lack of education really more prevalent now than ever before?

[tangerine]

Sometimes, when I watch the "Jaywalking" segment on "The Tonight Show", I almost don't know whether to laugh or cry. It's amazing what some people don't know! I remember seeing one guy on there who thought that Mexico City was the capital of New Mexico! Not only that, but there are Americans who can't locate their own country on the map and who think that Alaska and Hawaii are countries outside the US. Plus, a recent survey showed that a lot of Brits think that Sherlock Holmes was a real person and that Sir Winston Churchill and the Duke of Wellington were fictional characters! And don't get me started on all the people who have trouble with reading comprehension, spelling, and grammar! Have ignorance and a lack of education always been just as prevalent as they are now, or have things actually gotten worse?

[Chicago]

yes very much so just look at the questions on this forum

[watterlinn]

i would say thing have gotten worse now more than ever before, because it is only now that so many people have such free access to so much knowledge. think of libraries, computers...not to mention the schools and all the free educational opportunities presently available to almost anyone. at least in the USA...

and yet So Many make no attempt to avail themselves of all of this...So Many seem to intentionally Shun any educational opportunity...it that sense things do seem worse to me these days...

if there were a lot of ignorant people in days gone by...at least it wasn't due to choice. the world wide web and the information superhighway was not at almost anyone's fingertips...too many people are ignorant these days through Choice. or plain laziness. sad.

[im lost]

I think it has reached an all-time high. It is extremely prevalent during the past decade, as a society in general, we've seem to lost focus of the real goal. We associate ourselves and focus on the intangible things.
Let's look at our society. I remembered watching CNN a while back, and coincidentally it was the day that Paris Hilton was going to be released from prison. I can assure you that my intentions were clearly to watch the news. Anyhow, right when Paris Hilton walked out, I recall the news reporter making a statement somewhere along the lines of "Twenty something years ago, Nelson Mandela walked out a free man. Today, Paris Hilton walks out a free woman."

I'm sorry, am I missing something here? Since when does someone whose life is basically a joke deserve to be compared to Nelson Mandela? I think that pretty much speaks for itself about where our society is today.

[Maureen S]

According to polls out today, the American youth are less educated than Europeans and other countries. They have a very low rate of graduations and are now seen as one of the worst countries for education.

Apparently the bottom half of graduation classes choose to be teachers. Probably the answer lies in that statement alone.