As somebody who interacts with high schoolers on a regular basis, I attribute their nastiness to the snowball effect.<p>They can't read long form information because they didn't want to before high school. Now they <i>can't</i> without a great exertion of effort.<p>They can't write because they don't read, which is where it is easiest to learn new words.<p>They think social studies is boring because it's a lot of reading and writing. That the class usually focuses on stuff that happened too long ago to be visible in their lives doesn't help.<p>They don't understand mathematics because their earlier instructors taught it as algorithms without context, the beautiful axiomatic nature of mathematics is never revealed.<p>By contrast, everyone can do PE. Even kids who stay indoors a little too long, slowly giving themselves radon induced lung cancer. If you're good enough, you can even get a scholarship to play on a college team.<p>It's no wonder in most schools so much emphasis is put on sports games.<p>So what do you get when you have a bunch of illiterate teenage prisoners in a room trying to read Shakespeare?<p>About the same thing you get when you have a thousand monkeys try to write it.