This is true in my experience. Even a (materials science) PhD student I'm working with told me he is so "bad with computers" that when someone asked him to open a specific directory, he answered "what is a directory?".

I can only imagine it being much worse for the general population, and this makes me wish I could teach in high schools, even if just a bit. Unfortunately, part-time teachers, or teachers that just come for the odd conference/course on a specific topic seem to mostly be a uni thing, at least where I live.

I was just thinking about this the other day: kids should probably get more exposure to cryptography, maybe even before high school, for the following reasons: - kids love secret messages - crypto math is quite basic algebra - even without the maths, asymmetric crypto and hashes are quite easy to grasp - maybe it will allow them to better understand security as adults

I would love to see a future where public/private keys can be used as a general authentication mean, without it needing to be too dumbed down, as we can expect people to know the basics. It would also likely lower phishing issues.

I agree that schools are to blame here, even when they try to broaden the scope of their teachings. But I would give teachers some slack, as they were likely not prepared at all on some topics. So, maybe the solution here is indeed to ask parents to come and teach students some bits of their speciality? It could be done in multiple domains, and I feel like this would be a lot better for kids to be able to relate and project the content their are taught onto a person's job.