Smarter Than a 5th Grader

From a marketing perspective, there’s a brilliant new game show on TV called Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? The host, Jeff Foxworthy, asks adults questions from topics covered in grade school. The adult can rely on a 5th grader for help up to three times.

For example, Foxworthy asked what constellation the Big Dipper is in (Ursa Major). Another question asked which bone in the human body is the largest (the femur). All of the 5th graders allegedly knew the answers.

Clearly, our kids are being taught a lot of useless crap.

I try to imagine a situation where I would need to know the name of my largest bone. I suppose I might someday be in a museum when a pack of wild dogs attacked, and someone would see me standing next to the exhibit of early human skeletons and yell “Quick, grab a femur and start swinging!” But realistically, I can count on one hand the number of times anyone has asked me to hit a dog with a femur.

During the time that 5th graders are learning how much a leg bone weighs, I have to wonder what useful information they are NOT learning.  I wonder if anyone ever died because the first person to arrive at an accident scene knew the location of the Big Dipper but not CPR. I’m thinking it had to happen at least once.

I wonder if 5th graders are taught that attractive people generally do better in their professional lives. I don’t mean to be cruel to the kids on that show, but at least one of them has been eating too many cheese sticks while memorizing the names of bones. It’s not a good career move.

I’ll bet that most schools don’t have a class on how to recognize bullshit when you see it. What could be a more useful skill than that? I have to wonder how many people who are able to name all of the past U.S. presidents have shaved their heads and joined cults. I’ll bet it’s a few.

If it were up to me to add some classes to the grade school curriculum, I think I’d put more emphasis on these skills: public speaking, risk assessment, bullshit detecting, social skills, decision-making, managing your own body, and influencing people.

And CPR. In case I ever need a 5th grader to revive me.

Comments

[Cristina]

Well i think you haven't heard of something called general culture. Learning fragments of each subject in school brings a child to explore the possibilities they have as career opportunities later in life. Like many said, sure you don't see the use of learning that the femur is the longest bone in the human body or knowing that Bangkok is the capital of Thailand because you don't use it in a general conversation but eventually if ever someone speaks about it, I'm sure you'd like to know what is being talked about. Putting that aside, learning more complex things in school develops the brain and really that's what's gonna make them bshit detectors like you say and develop their interpersonal skills. You can't teach a 10 year old child that the government is corrupted or shit like that, because he'll only have a biased opinion and won't be able to develop it's own when the time is needed.

Besides ,public speaking is something they already learn, risk assessment, social skills, decision-making, managing your own body and so forth are things you learn later in school exactly because a child's brain is not capable of grasping those things at such a young age. Basically you're asking for society to create more egocentric assholes rather than conscious and open minds and sluts that flaunt their stuff instead of using their brain. Looks do help, but if ur dumb as f...k, that throws off everything.

Plus, there are so many beautiful things to this world and it's sad to thing that people like you would rather stay ignorant rather than reach all the opportunities given to them. Well that's exactly why presidents are dumb, society's corrupted and people would rather kill each other rather than help each other.
Really...maybe you should read more than dilbert's comics and donald trump's diary

[Albert Rogers]

On Bullshit Detection:
You are so right! By far the most important skill needed by any person in a democracy, or a plutocracy, or any kind of capitalist society, is the ability to recognize what Dickens (in the persona of Scrooge) called "humbug".

Humbug is not confined to the marketing of unnecessary goods at Christmas, nor to the obligatory false front of goodwill that goes with it.

Of course, the result of improved skills in humbug detection would be revolutionary. We would not simply be proof against new cults. We might actually read our Bibles and find that Jesus forbade his followers to pray in public, and that he'd consider "In God We Trust" to be taking God's name in vain. (Matthew 4-6)

We might realize that the American Revolution was a Rebellion, which is rather different from the unthinking obedience to leaders that "patriots" are expected to give.

On Evolution and Natural Selection
People who are taking antibiotics should know about the natural selection that is going on in their bodies. Bacteria that are resistant to the antibiotic for a short period will survive, if you stop taking it the minute you feel better instead of taking the full course. The same goes for farmers using pesticides. The pests evolve! Not the same individuals, but their resistant progeny.

I was a mathematics teacher for a while, but I consider the ability to do 'long division' an esoteric skill, whereas the understanding of the mechanism of evolution is a vital gut-level understanding.

[Charles]

The thing about useless information is, it's rarely useless to everyone. I think I'd want an osteologist who knew that the femur is the longest bone in the body. In fact, I'd want him to know the appropriate relative lengths of all bones, so that when I break both my legs, he can tell if they got significantly shorter. The thing about 5th graders is that we don't know whether they're going to be osteologists, and knowing a few things about bones is going to make pre-med (and maybe even med school) a lot easier for potential osteologists. Sure, the information is useless to most everyone in the class; but when it comes to getting society to function, making med school easier for a future doctor is arguably worth the cost of teaching useless information to kids who honestly don't need any schooling (beyond reading, writing and arithmetic) for their future jobs. (Think about it. Most jobs require doing what someone smarter than you says in a memo or an on-the-job instruction booklet.)

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[Diggs]

It seems that you are neglecting the fact that there are a lot of people in the world who don't want to become mindless corporate drones. I'd love for my physician to know what a femur is, or for an astronomer to know something about the Big Dipper. Your classes might be fine for people who have no natural curiosity about the world and are content to become mindless drones or used car salemen. Luckily, the people I know who do know a bit about the world around them, the professors, historians, biologists, musicians, artists, etc., are not only more engaging and interesting than the people who majored in bullshit detecting and influencing people. And they're happier and more fun to be around too. And unlike those people who push paper or data across a computer screen, they never complain about their jobs. So children of America, learn about the femur and the Big Dipper. You're more likely to die happy.

[S]

http://blueslover2004.blogspot.com/

[Autumn]

Why do the school teachers have to teach our children about finances and credit cards? When do we become parents and teach our own children and stop pointing the finger at why someone else is not teaching our children.

[Lindsay]

Hello people!! I'm a fifth grader and have a college reading level! Tell authors to make books at my level but with age-appropriate context! Please! I need a good book to read!

[derek]

alot of the things you said are true...i will be the first to admit that i know a bunch of bull shit that i will never use...but school teaches a few good things...but most of it is bull shit so it really dont matter anyways....but i understand what you are saying in full

[kaiulanirose]

I think the most destructive element of any school system, wherever it is, no matter how much useful information is being transmitted to our children is the notion that having knowledge, useful or useless, makes us superior to people who don't have it. We trade in "knowledge" as though it were a commodity that determines our inherent worth as human beings, and all knowledge, whether useful or useless to us collectively or individually is reduced to a mere pawn in our quest to feel good about ourselves at the expense of others in the great oneupmanship game.
The greatest knowledge of all, and to which all other knowledge is subordinate, is that each one of us is a genius in our own way and each of us has something vital to contribute to the human experience that could make the world a better place if we but would.

[josh]

i'm one of those people who remembers everything. school was fun -i have 2 bachelors degrees. i know i'm in the minority but i'm me - i like knowing things.so what? And bullshit detecting? please. it's apparently not a strong human trait-i see an aweful lot of bullshit in these posts. i probably failed to see a lot more. Education is a mirror. Mw wife is a 6th grade teacher-she works her ass off for those kids-her goal is to help raise them into people-school isn't the best way to do it,sure, but it's the tool she has. enough said.

[Zakhariah Fairfax]

I am all for teaching kids skills for dealing with life's complexities and constant changes (critical thinking is top of my list), and I am all against the drudgery of rote memorization and recitation. As a result, I commend the things on your final list.

But do not tell us which facts are useful or useless. That is for the child to decide. They know what they are interested in, and if not, then covering different topics gives them a chance to explore the options.

Perhaps what you mean is that *only* teaching lists of facts is useless. If not, then I must confess that I am sorely disappointed.

[Ashton]

LOL I have to laugh at that woman who had to use a cheat when asked the question "What country do you come across if you go north from Montana." Anyways, I think some of this stuff ISN'T taught in grades 1-5, those kids just receive the answers beforehand, I think. I also agree that more ethnic backgrounds should be represented, it is a very racist show. Asian kids are much smarter than white kids, as if they learn another language it stimulates their brains more, and makes them SMARTER. Oh yeah.

[alex turner]

school is bootcamp for kids!!!!!

[Ms. Black]

What about diversity?

There is only one Black child (who is hardly ever called on…) on the show and everyone else is White, I assume.

What about mixing it up a little by putting a Latino and Asian (why choose) classmate on the student panel?

I am certain that there are thousands of kids watching this show who would love to see their ethnic background represented…or are we being told that “minority” students simply aren’t as smart as white students?

[Greg]

These kids are young, so what exactly are you going to teach them in 5th grade? All the things they learn are meant to stimulate their minds and let them learn fascinating and fun stuff. When you get older you then begin to learn more practical stuff. BUT... turning the tables, what exactly do you learn when your in high school? As I went thought college I used about 5% of what I learned in high school. When I hit my 5 year mark at my full time job I can say I use 0% of what I learned in high school. Out of my whole pre college schooling all I learned was the English language and proper grammer/punctuation.