They do clearly know about other things such as internet search engines and rock music. But the fundamentals of what I would call cultural literacy are sadly missing for too many of them. I hope the trend can be reversed. Ninety-three per cent do not know William Caxton was the father of printing and that John Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Ninety per cent cannot identify 1815 as the year of the battle of Waterloo.
Young adults do score highly on pop culture questions.
But memory decay seems to set in rapidly. Many results appear to point to a progressive breakdown in the transmission of historical and cultural facts between the six generations questioned for the survey. This group came top answering 19 of the 40 questions. People over 65, whose education began when rote learning was more common, scored well on some answers but came top on only six. Young adults were top on five questions - all about pop culture or the internet.