As far as personal involvement, basically none. I had a very lucky childhood and I saw rather little to "rebel" against. I suppose the closest "rebellion" I've participated in was the rejection of the belief systems my parents raised me in, but that's a very low-cost form of rebellion, so I wouldn't exactly go around calling myself a rebel. I've worked mostly for large corporations and waste copious amounts of time on the internet.
Of course not. I don't think anyone was claiming that, though I could be wrong. There's a difference between saying "I don't think we should bother teaching this" and saying "I don't think we should teach this because it's too hard". If anyone claimed the latter, I missed that.
That's your prerogative. But for those of us a generation or two younger than you, that simply isn't the case anymore. And I don't especially see that as a problem.
It's more efficient if that's what you and everyone else is used to. This is somewhat reminding me of a DVORAK vs QWERTY debate. It can easily be argued that one is more efficient, and if you and everyone around you actually uses one over the other, then that might even be correct. But one format (QWERTY with keyboards, block writing with handwriting) has taking predominance.
Well, for one, they're not. Nobody's suggesting eliminating all handwriting. But students do have a limited amount of time in the day. To add new material, you either have to get rid of older material, compress coverage (ie spend less time on the same amount of material) or go to school longer.
Eeeeew, no, we're staying far far far away from Comic Sans, 
. But that really is, for people of younger generations, the difference. It may not be for you, because you grew up in a different era when that was not the case, but for many people, that is the case now.
At that point, you're learning for the pleasure of learning, and for better or for worse (I'd likely agree with you that it's for worse), many people have quite simply learned (ha!) that learning isn't pleasurable. This certainly isn't the case for everyone - that's actually why I took up ASL - just because I wanted to, because I didn't know it, and because I thought it'd be fun.
Right, yes. This is similar to a modern American not only being able to do his or her job, but also being able to tell you who was on American Idol the last two weeks, who in their neighborhood is dating, are mediocre at one or two sports, and have a couple of hobbies. However, all of these latter things are different for people, and just because, say, my dad's hobby is photography, doesn't mean that it should be included in the core curriculum for every student.
Because they don't want to learn them, mostly. You can't force people to learn what they don't want to learn (ask an average American about 16th century history - they probably don't remember much of anything because they didn't actually learn it, they memorized key facts and then promptly forgot them after the test).
And now it's being replaced with something else. Typing is the new skill that would either have to be crammed in or replacing something else with it.
