A trend in education?

There seems to be a trend in education where material that's cutting-edge research first gets taught in graduate-level classes and then, several years later, in undergraduate classes. Some even makes it into high-school classes. When my father went to college, for example, quantum mechanics hadn't made it into undergraduate classes yet, buy the time I was in high-school it had worked its way into the chemistry class that I had. I may have come across an even more extreme example of this last week.

I noticed that the book Special Relativity, part of the MIT Introductory Physics Series, is listed on Amazon.com as being written at a level suitable for "young adults." That's the same audience that The Hobbit is apparently suitable for. Or Brian Jacques' Redwall series.

If special relativity is now suitable for young adults, I'd hate to guess where they're teaching quantum mechanics these days. Or cryptography.