Note to British youth: Columbus did not defeat the Armada

But television and the media are clearly not entirely to blame.

Educators point to failings in the school system. History courses, for example, focus too heavily on the 20th century, they say, neglecting earlier periods. Shakespeare students often do not have to read the full play - they just watch a video and read a few scenes that may come up in examination questions.

Exams are a pale imitation of the tests set 20 or 30 years ago, according to teacher Chris Brotherton.

"Exams are getting easier," he says, anticipating another set of inflated results when marks are awarded for 16- and 18-year-olds later this month. "Because we have 45 percent going on to university now, compared to 15 percent a generation ago, it has to be easier to get an 'A' grade."

But he claims that at the same time, teaching has improved. "When we were at school it was 'chalk and talk.' There was no thinking - it was all about memorizing."

A surge in university admissions suggests that youth see value in acquiring knowledge. But Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, says professors complain that the academic standard of incoming students "is nothing like what it was 10 or 15 years ago."

"Undoubtedly, traditional standards in this country have dropped markedly over the last 20 or 30 years and a lot of it we would put down to the cultural change in the education system where content has been thrown out in order to allow more young people to achieve success," Mr. Seaton says.

The problem is hardly Britain's alone. Across the pond, the US Department of Education reported in 2001 that more than half of high-schoolers thought the US fought World War II in partnership with Germany, Japan, or Italy. Sixty-five percent couldn't link the Boston Tea Party to the American Revolution.

Such ignorance is not new, either. In 1987, educator E.D. Hirsch created a storm with the publication of "Cultural Literacy," outlining essential facts that he thought educated Americans should - and by his estimate, didn't - know.

In Britain, not everyone subscribes to this view of a dumb and dumber country.

Professor Adamson says the students passing through his classes are more intelligent and articulate than their predecessors 10 years ago. Plenty of them know that Gandalf never got close to the Spanish Armada.

David Goodhart, editor of "Prospect," a high brow monthly, says intellectualism is alive and well in Britain.

"In Britain, we have always despised the idea of the preening expert who is not understood by the ordinary man," he says, "But we actually have a more thriving media, university, theater culture than Germany and other countries in continental Europe where there is a more formal respect for the intellectual."

Page: 1 | 2