Mommy, can you tell me how to add fractions?

This is what I heard from a friend of mine yesterday at an 居酒屋 over non-alcohol dinner.
He teaches physics and information technology at a college near Atsugi. His college authority has long suspected that there was a serious decline in students' academic performance in his college. They decided to conduct a test that questioned students' general knowledge about everything. In the test there was a question "write alphabet". To their great surprise, half of the students failed to write alphabet in correct alphabetical order.
This is surprising enough, but it may be too early to be surprised. Some students cannot add fractions (分数の足し算). They do like this
1/2 + 3/5 = 4/7
As you can see, what they do is add numerators (分子）and denominators (分母) respectively. No idea of common denominator (通分) or fractional reduction (約分). It would be understandable if they were the students belonging to literature department or majoring philosophy or art. But they are the students of scientific department!
It has been a while since people started to lament the declining academic achievement at college. But never had I even imagined that their level is such low.
We may have spoiled them. We ourselves have studied hard and worked hard to boost this country to an economic giant. But doing this, we wish somewhere deep down inside an easier life. When we achieved our goal of economic success, we naively wanted our children not to have troubles and burdens that we suffered from. We were under the illusion that letting kids live without trouble is our love to them.
It is not too late. We can do something about it. I strongly want to see what I can do and do anything to change this situation to enable them at least to add fractions correctly.