I can think of many people both younger and older than I who suffer from the same issues so I don't think its just a generational thing.
The other side of the schooling coin is since I've taught my kids well at home they are bored in school due to haveing to learn and the pace of the slowest in the class. I went to college with others who suffered from the same fate, got terrible grades in school due to boredom, they were very smart, one guy was doing everything from pirating software to building tesla coils to pipe bombs, but would get bad grades in programmins, electronics or chemistry classes. As we try to make everyone conform to the same standard and learn at the same pace your going to have that problem.
And now there is so much political crap shoved into the schools, like someone mentioned above, the theory of evolution is no loger taught as a theory, even though it can't be proven, its taught as fact so ow our kids learn "facts" without basis, reasoning or proof and start to blindly believe anything taught without question.