Well, if I am, then I'm also patronizing myself... Sorry if it sounded like that...

But well, yes, maybe going to a public school does change your point of view, not that it makes people more intelligent, but it may just open a wider (or just a different) cultural horizon. I was still in England at age 11, and a lot of our teachers in secondary school just couldn't care less about actually teaching kids interesting things. Of course, there ARE dedicated teachers, with a real talent and interest in what they're teaching, but they aren't ALL that good, and if the Them had had a couple of bored and therefore boring teachers, I'm not all that surprised that they could be really wrong or just plain not know about a lot of things...

And don't forget their parents too, I personnally learned a lot about the cultural world from my parents who are both interested in all sorts of things, but I have a lot of friends who's parents' taste for culture doesn't go much further than Coronation Street or Big Brother, and therefore, I'm not all that surprised if even at 20+ they don't know anything much about classic littterature. It doesn't make them less intelligent, and to be quite honest, they'd beat me in any quizz on modern TV culture , so hey...