Do you remember taking Music Appreciation and/or Art Appreciation classes in High School? While most of us viewed those classes as a waste of time, they still managed to instill an awareness of artforms that would otherwise have seemed alien or irrelevant. Other History classes focused on large events, movements and dates. These humanities classes, however, focused on appreciating the values of other cultures in other times/places.
Given that most, if not all, of these classes were cancelled more than a decade ago, it's not surprising to me that we've raised a generation who is functionally culturally illiterate.
Now that we are turning the nation over to a group of people who think that Kanye was the first President of the US, we may need to lower our expectations.