London, Italy
Female baboonA local station does a corny trivia contest ever few hours in which they offer a prize to listeners who can answer five trivia questions. Sometimes the questions are designed to be answered by monkeys and other days they step it up a notch to challenge the average minimally educated human.
The first question of today's trivia challenge was "Who is the president of the United States". After retardo caller thought about it for a moment, she got the answer correct. Whew. Question number two was too much for her though. When asked of what country is London the capital, she hesitatingly answered Italy.
Is it really possible that there are people who know how to dial a telephone and not know where London is?
posted by Intellectual Insurgent @ 5:18 PM
11 Comments
11 Comments:
It is reasonable to expect that the ability to locate London is to a degree dependent upon a person's economic standing in society, and therefore should not be a cause for immediate disparagement. The means to travel is an even more potent catalyst of geographic curiosity than the desire to do the same.
I have known people who have never been fortunate enough to leave the country. But I've never quizzed them on geography. The more important question to be able to answer is "What countries colonized America?"
Groucho Marx used to ask the question on his old quiz show, ;
Who is buried in Grants tomb.?
Since he asked the question many times and especially of people that got most everything else wrong , they could usually answer this question , but not always.
Most Americans would be lost without speed dial.
Does that answer it?
Most Americans cannot find Iraq on a map.
George Orwell's book "1984." In that story, three slogans are engraved in the Ministry of Truth building: "War is peace," "Freedom is slavery," and "Ignorance is strength."
Doesn't surprise me, since these are the same yocals that voted for Bushco.
I have worked in Hi Tech for almost 30 years, and I work around many people with advanced degrees. I learned long ago, not to be shocked anymore about what they "don't know".
I remember talking with an Engineer a few years back who had to travel a lot to Asia, and developed business partners in Taiwan, and Mainland China. Somehow I brought up the name, Chang Kai Shek, and he didn't know who the hell I was talking about.
Scary, very scary.
Yep, it is no question we are failing in our schools.
Could it be that when there is little or no competition you get a poor product?
Maybe vouchers would change that because then even the poor have a choice?
Or is choice bad?
It would be to the NEA! :)
Tenure and a captive audience can not be a good thing.
Isn't it amazing that when a professional athlete is in his "contract year" he somehow puts up amazing numbers, but once he has his long term contract, his numbers seem to tail off considerably?
Competition is what brings excellence. Changing the deck chairs on the Titanic, (trying new techniques in the only school we can go to), is never the answer.
FAR.
just to be sure "intelligent design" has nothing to do with improving the quality of our education.
It would be interesting to do a survey that tests whether people know that the language, 'English', originates in a country called 'England'.
I swear, sometimes I just don't know what to say.
Hah, that would be a funny test. That test would also include Jason's proposed question. It makes sense to me that some people might not know Chiang Kai-Shek, but not knowing London. I was speechless.
Int. Ins.:
I'm back already.
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