For the sake of humor, let me tell you in my first job out of college I had to do some write-ups in pencil. The manager would then (gleefully?) mark it up entirely in red pen and hand it back to be re-written again in pencil. (So, thank you to everyone who contributed to the era of word-processing!)
Nowadays, we cannot figure out the philosophy. On the one hand reports are that the world (let's not be country specific) needs skilled workers, but the students are in an environment in which what is expected of them seems very low.
We can't make sense of it either. So maybe that is when the chaos theory works? Maybe no one is really connecting the big picture between student today, worker tomorrow.
It'll really make your head hurt and furrow your brow when you try to trace history and figure out are we doing better as humans, worse, the same? You can look at it so many ways; it is hard to conclude.
Maybe we are in period of great change and because we are in it right now we can't see it entirely.
