Well, even if they did teach it I doubt if they teach the differences between a shogun and a sumuri. I love history now but I when I was in school I thought it was the most useless thing ever and a total waste of my time. Besides it was half bunk anyway.
And yes, our education system is turning out and graduating functional illiterates, sadly.
Here is one reason why, A few years ago I had a friend who wanted to be a coach and phys-ed teacher, so she has to do her year of student teaching and gets stuck in a junior high. Maybe toward the end of summer I see her and ask her where she is teaching and she said she isn't and has no plans to ever again. When I ask why she said there isn't enough money in the world to get slammed around, spit in her face and called an effin c--t, and not be able to do anything about it. All you can do is write them up and call security to have them removed.
Respect starts at home, these are our kids people. I'm not an advocate of violence but sometimes a good trouncing might just be the ticket.

That being said, I see more and more people on the internet that will spell threw when it should be through, can't tell the difference between their and there or to and too, are and our and that g--d--m text thing is totally ruining our written language in the younger generations.