I am speaking solely for America. No. We have more information, laregly due to the Internet. Therefore, we have access to all of the knowledge that anyone has gathered in the history of humanity.
The U.S. Department of Education was solely created to raise national test scores (which were pretty bad). Now, test scores are even worse. The U.S. No longer leads the world in any intellectual subject.It still has the best engineering schools, but over 50% of the degrees are awarded to foreign students.
Only a tiny fraction of U.S. Students major in science or math, which are the only viable subjects for advancing society. So, if you analyze the evidence, today's generations (on average) are actually dumber than those in the past.
I think it depends...In the past there were very smart people, otherwise we wouldn't have what we have now such as fire, light, wheels... that then helped other things to develop. As technology evolves so does our brains that manufacture this technology...I guess that every age (in terms of period of time) has its intelligent people. No one is going backwards in terms of intelligence and development.
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.