It makes you cynical about what they learn

On Tuesday, I got talking to this woman I have know since about 2000. She is three years older than myself. I haven't seen for a while, and she told me that her daughter is studing A-level English Language. I replied to that, "Oh that's good" and then questioned, "Is she enjoying it?". Seconds later, the person I was talking to received a text from her daughter, who could be one year away from going to University, wanting to know what the word cynical means. I knew what cynical meant from about the ages of 13 or 14 or so, so I found it bizarre and worrying that her daughter has proceeded to a relatively advanced stage in education without understanding the semantics of a comparatively simple word.

I know they give people one mark for putting their name on a exam paper. I seem to remember, and my mind doesn't play tricks on me, us getting points deducted for mispellings, along with punctuation and grammar errors. They don't do that now.