Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?

Good point, but I'm just saying...
Studio audience, national TV, how they can add 2+2 correctly is better than I'd do.

 

Also, they fuck with the contestants so much that I don't think they'll ever get someone brave/stupid enough to go for the million...

I don't watch it all the time, but I've never seen someone go for it...

 

I thought real hard back to my fifth grade days and I can honestly say that never once were we asked a question like y=3x and 3x=12. I know the answer, but that was NOT a fifth-grade question.

 

Agreed. The whole show rubs me the wrong way for that reason. They ask people random trivia that no one would know, and then rub their faces in the fact that they lost to a fifth grader.

 

My fourth grader knew the answer. They teach that stuff in elementary school, believe it or not.

 

I'd be afraid I'd freeze up and miss the first question and make a complete fool of myself.

I don't need national TV for that.

 

They may teach it now, but they didn't teach some of it when I was in elementary school.
I remember for an absolute certainity that my first exposure to algebra was in sixth grade. That's when, at my school, you went to the middle school building and we all dreaded it.

 

My fourth grader had some algebra-type equations, but they don't call it algebra.

 

Perhaps, with this early schooling, he could be good to work for the Plain-Dealer someday, unlike his pops.

 

Yeah. He's good at math. Maybe he could crunch the numbers to see how many folks to let go that month. Job security.

 

At my last rag, the local school district gave me a copy of the practice test for the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) which students are required to pass at specific grade levels. I got hold of the high school one and let me tell you, it was tough, at least from the math and science portions. And I swear quite a bit of that was stuff we simply didn't address in the late 1980s.

However, it should be noted that many of us don't use these scientific or algebraic skills in our daily lives. These students are actively learning them so it's easier for them to apply that knowledge.

 

Algebra is fair game, I suppose, although most students don't learn that until eighth grade (at the earliest).

But the questions on the show typically ask stuff that is very obscure -- hardly something anyone who hadn't memorized long lists of random factoids would know.

For instance, I just clicked on the web version of the game (http://www.fox.com/areyousmarter/features/index.htm) and here was the first question:

How many astronauts were onboard each space capsule launched during NASA's Gemini Space Program?

Is this something you seriously think is stressed in a Fifth Grade Science class? If so, my tax dollars are being wasted.

Of course the kids on the show always seem to have the answers. And Wikipedia explains why: