Are you smarter than a 5th Grader?

Wow.  Every now and then I catch this show on TV.  It amazes me.  Last night a Magna Cum Laude school teacher didn’t know that the Danube river was on the continent of Europe.

O M F G

Is all I can really say.  Are people today really that ignorant?  Have the cell phone owning, texting generation really taken over the schools?  Are kids really being taught like this?  I could understand if they were getting all the contestants from Mississippi and New Mexico, but they're not.  This girl was a MAGNA CUM LAUDE graduate of her college and had trouble with every question, real toughies like “how many centimeters are in 3.5 meters?”  I do not blame her for her ignorance, mind you.  It was her wedding day and she just may have had other things on her mind, like her tats showing, both ankle and back.  Yep, her tramp stamps were in full view.  And get this, her husband was ALSO a teacher and didn’t know the meter/centimeter question.  How cool is that?

Did you know they have NEVER given away the grand prize on that show?  The $1 Million prize, for answering 11 5th grade questions has NEVER been given away!!!  How brilliant are that show’s producers?  God bless ‘em!  11 questions, 1 million bucks! WOW.

Am I saying I could do it?  NOPE!  I got one wrong yesterday (Who invented Penicillin?  I forgot about Fleming and for some odd reason thought it was Jonas Salk?)  I bet I would have looked funny standing there all smug and been called wrong...

Is the show a dumbed down Jeopardy?... you bet it is.  It’s Jeopardy for the text message crowd.  The ones too ignorant to know better and too stupid to do anything about it.  I have never minded ignorance, but when you are and you know it, and do nothing, you cross the line into the realm of the stupid... and then I despise you.

Here is some fun... a quick quiz for you 5th grade graduates out there... be honest, how did you do?  And then there is the Salina, Kansas 8th grade test hoax that I post here. That really is not an 8th grade test, it is a test developed for the teachers to make sure they knew what they were doing.  Just as the internet seems to screw everything around, this is no different.  For years this has circulated trying to make us all feel dumb.

All I can say is I thank god I was educated when and where I was.  A reason I love living in New Mexico is the feeling of superiority I get when I walk around...  after all, we’re 50th in education, and it pervades every part of our existence here.