I know plenty of people < 16 using markdown and latex. I don't know where adults get their information about kids but they are the ones keeping kids unaware of better tools than office 2010/2007 (which is what is used in most schools here). You can do a lot with word, yes but the point is most don't need to. Word is unnecessarily complex and the only reason most people can use it is because from 3rd grade to 10th grade, they teach it at school. No one teaches markdown or latex. This is simply a problem of familiarity.

It takes 30 min to learn markdown and maybe more to get hang of latex but I can assure you schools spend more than 30 mins to make students learn word.

And if teachers can't learn markdown or unwilling to, maybe they shouldn't be teachers given their job is to constantly relearn and teach it to their students?

Google docs or office might not remain tomorrow either - there maybe alternative but they are not open source. Isn't that problematic along with all the proprietary tools built on top of that?

lifetime of proprietary tools is short. Why not learn open standards?

Corporate leaking into schools need to stop. Government should fund open source alternatives to all the proprietary tools used in schools.