Yeah I mean a ~~casual~~ causal chain can be traced back to the big bang. But looking at the entirety of history, you tend to look for certain inflection points.

So in my mind, traveling from Present backwards in time, the journey looks like this in my mind:

Present :: Idiocracy
1st :: No Child Left Behind
2nd :: Bush elected
3rd :: Clinton Glass Steagle
4th :: Reagan
5th :: Nixon

I can zoom in anywhere along that timeline to talk about how each event impacted this topic.

Lemme know if you want to explore any of that like for example what did Reagan do to impact education today long after his death.