If you have been watching American Idol the past few nights (We have not been. Thankfully, it seems like bot Jessica and I have completely lost interest. There isn't much talent on the show anymore.) then you have seen a new game show called "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader". The gist of the show is that they bring in adults, some with college degrees, and ask them questions from elementary school books. There are also five kids (5th graders) on the show that the adult contestant can use as ''helps". The adults are then asked to pick from categories, like 1st grade art or 4th grade math (1st through 5th grade questions of various subjects) and answer a question from the category. The first question I saw was a social studies question: "what month is Columbus Day celebrated?" I was stumped. I now know it is October, but I could not for the life of me remember before hearing the answer. Another question was a math question: "If the area of a triangle is 4" and the base of the triangle is 2", what is the height of the triangle?" I got this one correct. 1/2 base x height = the area of a triangle, so the answer is 4". Still, I missed about half of the questions. I felt dumb. I think I would like this show, but there are a few things that will keep me from adding it to my normal rotation. First, Jeff Foxworthy. Don't get me wrong, I like Jeff Foxworthy as a comedian. As a game show host, he sucks. He is very dry and tried to incorporate his act into the show. It doesn't work too well. Second, it is only 30 minutes long, so it over before it really gets started. This goes into the third reason, which is the pacing of the show sucks. They are trying to make it all dramatic by adding pauses between the contestant answering the question and finding out if they are right or not (like they pause in Deal or No Deal). As a result, there are only, like, four or five questions asked per game. If I am watching a quiz show, I need it to be fast paced so that it keeps my interest. The long pauses don't work.
All in all, I guess I like the show enough to watch it if there is nothing else on, but I don't think it will go too far. Everyone knows that we, as adults, dump information from our minds that we don't need. I don't need a game show proving that to me daily. I have kids and I know I will feel dumb enough when they ask me for help on their homework. It's already happened.
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3 comments:
I think this just goes to prove that what we learn in grade school is useless! :)
Most of it, yeah. But don't let your kids in on that fact.
I concur with Ames. I would say the most useful thing we learned was social skills and maybe English class.
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