Today it's the cell phone and an app for everything. The kids in the public school system today are brain dead, with exceptions of those whose parents actually care about an education. Rote memorization is a thing of the past.
When I got out of the Navy I had no intentions of college. Something happened one day, one of those "Devine interventions", where I said to myself, " there has to be a better life than this", and used my veterans benefits and enrolled in college. Fourteen years later I received my PhD.