Issues like this are a little tricky... I agree that it's important to have an awareness of matters of cultural and historical importance, but we need to keep in mind that that awareness will be much more solid if one has actually lived through the experience. Learning about something in school is useful and important, but I just don't think the level of retention is comparable. We'll likely absorb something about the issue through our study, but may not hang onto all the details. Our parents and grandparents
lived through WWII, McCarthyism, etc., so of course their knowledge base on those issues will be deeper. I know that there are plenty of things I learned about Canadian history in elementary school that I just
do not remember now, and might actually fail a quiz on. You can't rehash every subject every year, so by the time of high school graduation you just very well may not recall something you learned in grade 7. Dates and names in particular can be almost impossible for some people to hang onto, and it's possible that quizzes like these are largely composed of that stuff since it's easy to test for.
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52% could identify the theme of 1984.
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Statistics like this are interesting. Had all the students tested
read 1984 at that point? If they hadn't, it doesn't mean they weren't going to, it may have been on the curriculum for the next year. When I was in high school our literature classes seemed to be themed - in Grade 11 we focused on American classics, such as Gatsby and the like, in Grade 10 it was Dystopian literature, which included 1984, Brave New World, The Chrysalids and others. And we did one Shakespearian play each year regardless. It ended up being pretty well-rounded, but had you tested me at one specific point there would have been a lot I hadn't yet read.
It could also be argued that as the years go by there is more and more history to learn; eventually it will reach a point where we simply can't spend the same amount of time on events of the 1800s as our parents did. I'm
not saying the current generation is at that state - just that at some point, our children's children's children or whatever will be. There's only so much information you can cram into a brain or a textbook, and we
are living in very rich times in terms of new developments and (what will be) historical events.
I actually think literature can be the most effective tool in addressing this problem. When I read historical fiction I find it gives me a much better grasp of the subject than I might have gotten from lecture alone. And then I get to experience the literature at the same time, which has cultural value. Of course you need to get the facts too, but I always found that when a subject in school had a follow-up film or novel it made the subject much more real.