University lecturers frequently find that they must attempt to teach new students the grounding in subjects which were insufficiently taught at school. The speed of the decay is gathering a rapid momentum. Intelligence is biological. Knowledge is the acquisition of facts, but intelligence is the biological potential to understand and to learn. There are huge variations in levels of intelligence between individuals within a race and between different races, communities or families.
Intelligence is inherited.
Because there are many genes involved in determining intelligence, it is a very delicate balance. If you wanted to improve the intelligence of the next generation in Britain, you would achieve this if you successfully encouraged intelligent couples to have several children and discouraged unintelligent people from so doing. This positive eugenics would result in a more intelligent population. If, on the other hand, the policy were to encourage the intelligent to concentrate on careers at the expense of having children, and to lavish resources on the less intelligent, who as a rule produce the most offspring, this will result in a rapid lowering of the intelligence of the population. Civilisation without a eugenic policy is self-destructive.