The reality seems to be just the opposite. Though the educational potential of the internet is limitless, it’s becoming apparent that students use technology less to learn than to distract themselves from learning, and to take advantage of toxic short cuts such as research paper databases and essay-writing websites. Entrance exams administered by ACT Inc establish that half the students now entering college in the US lack the basic reading and comprehension skills to succeed in literature, history or sociology courses. Reading and writing skills among eighth graders decline each year, as internet penetration rises. Only three per cent now read at the level scored “advanced” and the state of Maine recently scrapped its eighth grade writing test because 78 per cent of the participants failed. Half the teenagers tested by the advocacy group Common Core could not place the Civil War in the second half of the 19th century, a quarter drew a blank on Adolf Hitler, a fifth failed to identify America’s enemies in the Second World War. A third of America’s high school students drop out – one every 26 seconds – and two thirds prove incapable of higher education.