It's not just the education system that's to blame for people's ignorance. It's the influence of corporations controlling all branches of entertainment and news media that dictates what the public are spoon-fed as being important. These business magnates have their interests to protect, and with politicians in their pocket through funding election campaigns, as well as under the table bribes, then their influence spreads far and wide. Human nature is such that we don't want to look at unpleasant truths about suffering, so if there's a nice flashy story about some celebrity's latest indiscretion then folk will turn to that lapping up the salacious details.
Geography is an influence too, the size of a country. I lived in Atlanta for three years, which is by far the largest city in Georgia with the metropolitan area having more than 5,500,000 inhabitants. It's a world unto itself, and it struck me that many city dwellers I met had no idea what was going on in some small town out in the boondocks 50 miles away. As for what was happening in Iowa, then forget it. But this is partly because of how news is reported on television, which is very much focused on the immediate area. Unless there's some huge disaster, such as an earthquake in California, then Atlanta citizens were ignorant of the state of the union.
Again, some of this is down to their thoughts being manipulated by those controlling the media, moguls like Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch, who won't promote any stories that might harm their business interests. My ex-wife was rabid Republican, who was so right wing that she would have made Genghis Khan look like a social worker! She considered George W Bush to be a big wuss, even as he sent troops into Iraq. Mark Twain's jokey adage that 'God created war so that Americans would learn war' came true again, and at least some Americans learned more about this part of the world while giving the enemy some shock and awe.
Coverage of the issues involved was so over-simplified that I despaired, so I persuaded my ex-wife to at least look at the BBC's world service handling of the same stories. She was amazed at how much CNN and Fox news networks skewed the way they described things, as the BBC showed more sides of a story. 9/11 and the consequent warfare showed another aspect of the media to me, for politicians are largely absent from American news between their election campaigns—giving them a false credibility when they do eventually pop up, such as in the crisis caused by terrorist attacks. In the U.K. it's impossible to get away from politicians in the news, which while boring does at least give we citizens a greater political awareness and a knowledge of the issues that our elected representatives are lying to us about.
Politicians, and billionaires controlling the media, favour the old mushroom management way of influencing the thoughts of the public—keep them in the dark, and feed them with shit. Most people like the taste too, so is it any surprise that the average youngster knows more about Kim Kardashian's choice of makeup, than what's happening with refugees drowning in the Mediterranean?