It used to be that having an higher education even in a social or humanities related field gave you a basic understanding of the principles of the natural sciences that are absolutely required not to be a complete savage in a technical, modern society.

It doesn't matter if you're a PoliSci graduate, having a university education should mean that you are at least able to understand basic calculus, probability and statistics as well as the basic knowledge of physics so, for example, someone should intuit that face masks are useless to block an aerosol, and that maybe they could make things worse, because from basic physics, we know that every time we constrict the flow of a given volume per time of a fluid to keep the same flow the velocity of said flow will increase.

And you can see this everywhere. People are unable to understand how renewables can contribute to grid instability, because after more than 12 years of primary and secondary education, most of them don't really understand the basic physics of Alternating Current electric circuits.

The list of things that people should know after all the time they spend in school is staggering