Are you Smarter than a 5th grader?

Milan Fiori

Ok, so I just caught a full episode for the first time... because it's thursday night, and I have no life. But yeah, anyways has anybody else seen this show? I'm pretty sure that I've lost braincells from watching this show.

The end of tonights show, was with this Lady going for the top question worth 500,000 dollars. The question was "What continent is also a country" now I know I've only been out of highschool for almost 4 years, but this question is fairly easy yes? However, she had no idea what the answer was. None what so ever. Her guess after she walked away was 'All of them'...

Err yeah, I have more comments on this but am being lazy. Any other comments?
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Tonberry · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 9:30 pm Post subject:

I haven't viewed this program myself, but it's all the rage in my high school, so I've heard a lot about it. From what I have heard, the show's producers choose unintelligent adults and intelligent 5th graders to show either how well certain people are educated, or how unintelligent some adults in our world today are.

If all of the questions are at the difficulty level of the one you described, then I would be sorely disappointed to hear about someone missing those questions. I am a member of my school's Knowledge Bowl team and we have questions way more difficult than these, so it would make me more upset to see people missing such easy questions.

I don't intend to watch the show. Stuff like that doesn't interest me, anyway.

Amyral · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 9:32 pm Post subject:

I saw it for a little bit. Some of the question were legitimately difficult for me to answer (one was how far the earth is away from the Sun), but most were incredibly easy.

However, that's the point of the show. I'm sure in the audition process they select those who would have the most problems answering the questions, thus making everyone look stupider.

I'm also sure that the further away you get from middle school, the more you forget, especially on the elementary subjects once you've got a career of your own going and you're thinking about more difficult things, like mortgage rates.

Oh, and yeah, that is a fairly easy question.

Sage · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 9:35 pm Post subject:

I've seen one show. The contestants are total idiots.
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Milan Fiori · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 9:44 pm Post subject:

The questions range from 5th grade in difficulty to 1st grade. The one about the continents being a country was a 1st grader question. And the subject ranges from Geography, Math, Earth Science, World and US history, English and so on. So far, the hardest question I've seen happened to be the same one Amyral mentioned. How far is the earth away from the sun. But, it was also a true or false question. I think it was something like "True or False, the Earth is more than 40 million miles away from the sun" so I mean, it was a 50/50 chance of getting it right.

The screening process has to be like, giving tests out, and the person who gets the most wrong, is the best candidate! For a a half a million dollars, I'd gladly make myself out to look like a complete idiot.
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Amyral · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 9:50 pm Post subject:

Flare · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 10:24 pm Post subject:

I've seen that show once. There was a question on it that I had never even learned anything about. They wanted to know what geological era we're in currently. The answer was the cenozoic era. Somehow that 5th grader magically guessed the right answer.
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SwissStopwatch · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 10:38 pm Post subject:

I'm not in the habit of watching a whole lot of television, but I did see the listing for this on the TV guide channel. Then I decided to go with Walker: Texas Ranger instead. I mean, I figure that it's stacked so that the person they choose to show is most definitely not smarter than the 5th grader. I mean, otherwise it isn't good television. I guess. I really don't know for sure what counts as good television in the minds of the people making the decisions, but this seems like it probably doesn't cost much money to do, and provides plenty of opportunities to humiliate the contestants, and there always seems to be a lot of that around. Anyway, if I'm going to watch a show where I pretty much know what's going to happen right away, I'd rather it involve stereotypical villains getting kicked in the face a lot.

This does answer a question that's been nagging me for a bit, though. Namely, where are all those people that score in the lowest percentiles on standardized tests? You know, the people that have problems doing simple addition, the people who couldn't spell a word like car if it were to save their own life? I really couldn't fathom how these people could get through life to be anywhere, but now I know where they are. Clearly, they're on this show. That said, I don't need to watch this show to have it mock those people for me. I can do that quite well on my own...

Yvl · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 11:12 pm Post subject:

My friend's grandmother kept cutting into my phone conversation with her to ask us if we knew the answer to the questions. She was shocked how many the two of us knew.

I remember one of them was "Aside from China, what country has the second largest population?"

I wonder how well some of our politicians would do on this show...
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Amyral · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 11:58 pm Post subject:

CAPTAIN PLANET · Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 10:21 am Post subject:

The woman last night made me cringe. She was asked the question "which continent is also a country" and she said "all of them!". Also, she was asked what continent pandas come from, and she thought "Japan", but said "Asia". I think some of the contestants get on the show because the producers KNOW they're not smarter than a fifth grader.
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Yohn · Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 11:15 am Post subject:

D: I've not seen this, but my sister's quite fond of it... possibly because she is, in fact, a teenager. Hmm. I'd do fairly well on all of this because I help her with her homework.
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kuwaizair · Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 12:11 pm Post subject:

I somtimes wonderd about making up my own realitiy shows, some of them seem discusting, stupid or unfair.

For one thing, this show seems to be well, favored and maybe to make the children feel good. A lot has changed in education, a 3rd grader's schooling is not the same as what his parents had.

Take also in consideration the halt of learning. I don't sit at home reading math books, the dictonary or world politics for dummies, sure it makes me feel a bit stupid, I'd be better/smarter if I did.

If someone didn't have aldrabra in 6th grade and barly had it they can't answer, leaving the children cocky and full of themselfs, they possibly should ask the children things they needed to learn on their own to even it out.

Amyral · Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 1:03 pm Post subject:

Flare · Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 7:24 pm Post subject:

It's asking which has the second highest population, which is India.
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