Everyone's heard the same stories... today's kids just don't have a proper education. They don't know even the basics. If we don't somehow fix this situation we're going to be buried by other nations who have. Accepted wisdom? Gospel truth? How about complete crap:

"If anything," writes Sam Wineburg, a Stanford University education professor in a new Journal of American History article, "test results across the last century point to a peculiar American neurosis: each generation's obsession with testing its young only to discover -- and rediscover -- their 'shameful' ignorance. The consistency of results across time casts doubt on a presumed golden age of fact retention.

"Appeals to it," the article continues, "are more the stuff of national lore and wistful nostalgia for a time that never was than a claim that can be anchored in the documentary record."

In other words, such judgements are more about elitist politics and hidden agendas than they are about facts. Which is what anyone currently in school could tell you in a heartbeat.