Texas Tech's new student political organization PoliTech asked man-on-the-street questions of students around the campus. Now, I see these kinds of videos often, and I have to assume that the vast majority of people who know the answers are all edited out. Still, you have to wonder how many students they had to quiz before finding this many who don’t know how the Civil War turned out. Honestly, the vice president changes every few years, and he doesn't make much news, so I can understand young people not coming up with his name. But American students should know who won the Civil War, and who ruled the Colonies before U.S. independence. Watch and weep for our educational system. -via 22 Words
And the only time I've bumped into people do something similar, both on a camera and for a written survey, they seemed to not have the greatest scruples/work ethic/understanding of what they were doing. They wanted to asked if I knew who my senator and representative was, or who was the Lt. governor. The problem was both times I was on a trip out of the state I live in, but neither surveyor seemed to care. When I told them who was "my" representative, they marked it as wrong one the written survey (the video one I didn't bother sticking around for). I also saw them pestering foreign tourists to answer their questions too.
That said, a lot of people I've met from countries other than the US asked why people and education in the US is so obsessed with history, and talked of how wars and history before the 20th century was rarely covered in their schools, as civics and contemporary issues were more valued. This varies a lot from country to country, but for some they don't see videos like this as a big deal (at least without being told that some of this should have been in just about every student's curriculum at some point).
Besides, they don't need to know any "common man" items/issues, they're *all* going to be wildly rich and famous and not have to deal with "normal" life when they grow up.