The comparison they did in the video is a bullshit one anyway. Firstly, the historical figures were all *old* (except Dick Cheney, whom most of the students knew), and quite frankly being able to know historical presidents/Ghandi/Thomas Edison is hardly compulsory learning.
The more modern figures are pretty hard to miss - you'd have to live under a rock to not know who Eminem/Paris Hilton/Jack Black are.
It may have made more sense to ask them who Frank Sinatra/Bette Davis or similar were - it is a more likely historical comparison - though I suspect they'd mostly stuff up old 'celebrities' as well.
This does not neccessarily take away from the message in the video, which, otherwise, is a good one (i.e. that education is crappy). Question is how else to go about it without 'compulsory' tests? When you are trying to compare 2 (or 2 thousand) people for entry into college/for job positions etc., what better way than with a standardised test?
I also think the comparison with Abraham Lincoln is also a bit of a falsehood too. If you compare him with his peers, did he have a similar/shorter/longer education? Even if his *was* shorter, that is not a good enough statistical set to prove that you'd be better off without education.
Just to add to this - I was watching the amazing Race last night and the two blonde girls (models or cheer leaders or something...) were trying to buy tickets to Mauritius (not sure how to spell it myself, but comically impossible for just about all the contestants to pronounce) and the most direct flight was via London. Girl one: "London - where is that?"
I suspect that there may be people who even if teaching was better, wouldn't really learn a lot
