In Hiroshima, a modern city in a country with a well-educated populace, I met a recent high school graduate. I asked her what year the A-bomb was dropped there. She knew her grandparents had been incinerated in the blast, and she understood the significance of that cataclysmic event in a way that made the date seem utterly beside the point. Comprehension is not a mere accumulation of facts, and facts are not to be mistaken for understanding. We are not educational dwarfs in a world of giants.
Conventional wisdom is often wrong, and sometimes hazardous.
If we repeat to ourselves often enough that our educational system is inferior and our students are dunces, we will, in fact, become less than we are and be seen accordingly by others. Self-perception is a powerful force. I don't question that we must do much more to educate ourselves about the past and the present. But I suspect that each generation is aghast that the reality of the succeeding generation doesn't revolve around precisely the same axis. The invasion of Normandy yields to the conquest of cyberspace.