For what it's worth, there is a fairly specific villain to blame for this problem in the school district where I attended high school. In this district - which is not the district I grew up in - there is an awful math curriculum called CORE which is taught from first grade on and which emphasizes students "discovering" concepts on their own, etc. in place of teaching them basic skills. My understanding is that this is a holdover from reaction to (?) the "New Math" movement, and as far as I can tell, what it produces are college students who cannot divide 42 by 7 without a calculator. (I experienced this while tutoring an otherwise very bright friend of mine in calculus, and while the calculator plays a pernicious role in this story I don't think it's the culprit.)
So at least where I come from, the problem - at least as it seems to me - is that the curriculum has changed for the worse. I don't know how serious an issue this is in other parts of America or in other countries, though.
