Why look at the lack? What these young people are learning from engaging with the world through new technologies might amaze you. Come on. We can google all this stuff in a heartbeat and answer all these questions!

What's needed is to teach young people is how to think for themselves, ask questions, make decisions, be involved in their communities and fulfill their roles as citizens in a democracy.

See how they would react if asked: Why did the Colonies defeat the British? What caused the depression? Why did Nixon visit China? Did the constitution mention that corporations were citizens with individual rights? Why do we have such an abundance of resources and so much poverty?

I think the author is concerned about basic knowledge. Of course you can google it. But if you were to answer some of you outlined above like "What caused the depression?" or "Why did Nixon visit China".You can't provide a good answer to these questions when you are still googling it or looking at wikipedia.

Those questions might be appropriate for advanced classes, but the average high school student needs to be aware of what those events were and who the people were before trying to analyze.

Actually, I think you might be onto something. Ask the questions you propose and allow the students to come up with whatever answers they can formulate. They'll learn more that way than by studying for some multiple-guess test.