Is It Jargon Or Do You Really Not Know?

A few months ago I came across this clip (which unfortunately I can't seem to find again) of a random street interview in a few European cities, one of which was Cologne, Germany, so of course I felt intrigued to watch. As it turns out this was a clip of someone asking random strangers to answer the question "How many stars in the solar system?" To me this seems like an obvious question, and in general Europeans receive a must stronger science education that we do, I was sure the majority would get it correct. How very wrong I was. This in turn prompted me to put out a poll asking the same questions. I came back to it, saw that a few had answered. And still the answers astounded me.

So what is the answer? How many stars are there in our solar system? ONE. yup just one, that is, of course, our Sun. This guy:

So is this a matter of jargon or is it true a majority of people can't answer this question for lack of a good science background. To me, as an astronomer, this is so terribly obvious. However, I am starting to believe this may really be a matter of jargon and not a lack of education. I've asked this question randomly to friends and family too, and often the answer was wrong. So where are we going wrong?

I believe the answer lies in distinguishing between the Solar System and the Universe and/or Galaxy. The most common wrong answer is, Billion/Trillions. Hmm...noo... Then upon learning the correct answer, the most common response is something like "Oh wait, the solar system, yeah... I knew that". So let me distinguish:
Solar System: That would be the Sun and Planets (and asteroids, etc). The formal definition would be the sun and everything influenced by its local gravitational field, but let's keep it simply and just say the sun and the 8 planets (of 9 if your still being nostalgic and allowing Pluto in your count, but we won't go there, that's a whole new arguement ;-) ). In this arrangement, the only star is the Sun.

 Galaxy: A large gravitationally bound system of stars, gas, and dust containing billions to even trillions of stars. The best example is the Milky Way, which of course includes our Sun, and most of the stars you can see with the naked eye plus more which a telescope must reveal. Scientists estimated the Milky Way contains about 100 Billion Stars! This is what I believe people interchange when asked the question how many stars in the solar system? Hearing "stars" make them jump to the Milky Way causing a wrong first reaction and a mix up of terms.

Universe: This is the whole shebang, all the galaxies and clusters of galaxies, the whole of space and time as we know it. In the observable universe its estimated there are 10^24 stars (that's 1000000000000000000000000 stars!)

Are these terms, terms that should be common knowledge? Should the majority of educated persons know how to distinguish between the solar system, a galaxy, and the universe? As an astronomer I feel I can't answer this question unbiasedly. To me, I would think the answer to be YES OF COURSE, but I'll leave that for you to decide. What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comment box below, I'd love to know.