Missing history. Why?

I've recently become email buddies with an associate of my dad's from the sixties. He contacted me through our daughter-in-law's Facebook account. Like my interest in economics has driven me to be a latter-day student, his interest is history. He teaches classes and related two stories that got me to thinking about our future, relative to our knowledge of history.

As he greeted some middle school students, their teacher said, “We are here to learn about World War Eleven.” My friend then abandoned the use of Roman numerals when referring to the world wars.