Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader: Vacuous Primetime TV Proves My Point.
For a few years now I've become rather adamant about how useless the entire education system in the US is. Rather than teaching how to use and formulate critical thought, it seems to me that public schools have always seemed to be obsessed with teaching random arbitrary fact memorization. This will lead to a wasted education that will be forgotten months after school has ceased. It's applicable to many facets of education in this country from elementary school to college. I recall once in a public health class for pharmacy school, one of the learning objectives was to memorize the phone number of the WV poison control center. WHY!?!?!? Just think about that. I'm wasting my time memorizing a bloody telephone number I could f'n google.
To make matters worse, and this is just tangential rambling about how much pharmacy school sucks, the woman made the exam make the question unnecessarily tough. As I recall the number was something like 800-323-3322. The exam question was, roughly:
What is the telephone number of the WV poison control center?
a) 800-323-3223
b) 800-232-2332
c) 800-233-2223
d) 800-332-3332
e) none of the above
And I'm getting a doctorate degree for this shit.
So anyway, back to my point. Education in this country leaves me dumbfounded. Usually I get assholes that tell me I'm wrong, memorizing crap is good, blah, blah, blah.
Well FINALLY pop culture has come to my rescue. Fox has produced this show entitled "Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?" The show has so many instances of irony, it's beautiful. First, it's quiz show that is ironically hosted by international idiot Jeff Foxworthy. And second, it's a show that is made to ironically make intelligent adults look stupid because they are smart enough to not memorize useless facts.
I want to get on this show some day. "So, Mike, do you know what the capital of Alaska is?"
And I'd say, "Hell no, redneck boy. I don't care if 11 year old Jessica knows the answer. I'm a successful grown ass man that doesn't need to know that. It's either know the capital of Alaska or know what drugs interact with that St. John's Wort the cooky naturalist lady down the street takes. Lucky for her, I don't give a rat's ass about the capital of Alaska. Knowing state capitals pays jack, being a 5th grader pays jack...but being a PharmD gets me bank, baby! So fuck you and fuck the city of Juneau! I'm going to go diversify my stock portfolio, bitch."
Anyway, it's proof that elementary school, at the very least, is pointless. They had a successful lawyer that graduated from UCLA on there today. He didn't know a single damned question thrown his way. And why the hell should he? It's all useless trivia to him. He forgot all of that useless crap years ago because he doesn't need to know it, hence, his elementary school education was worthless to him in many aspects. Rather than memorizing the list of impeached presidents, he could have been hanging out at Dave & Busters or...gasp...learning about something that genuinely interests him. It reminds me of a quote my favorite movie director once gave about how he hated having the main motivation driving his education being fear of getting bad grades and, thus, punished at home:
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Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker. - Stanley Kubrick
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Damn straight.
Another annoying thing is that they obviously got ringers for the show. These kids were definitely taken from the gifted program of the state they live in. You could tell because they were cocky and thought they knew everything. I'm specifically pissed about one thing though. Some dumbassed 5th grader wrote down that "REM" stood for "Rapid Eye Movment" and they gave him credit for it. To hell with that, "Movment" isn't a word, there, genius boy.
I'm done.
~~Apathetic~~
To make matters worse, and this is just tangential rambling about how much pharmacy school sucks, the woman made the exam make the question unnecessarily tough. As I recall the number was something like 800-323-3322. The exam question was, roughly:
What is the telephone number of the WV poison control center?
a) 800-323-3223
b) 800-232-2332
c) 800-233-2223
d) 800-332-3332
e) none of the above
And I'm getting a doctorate degree for this shit.
So anyway, back to my point. Education in this country leaves me dumbfounded. Usually I get assholes that tell me I'm wrong, memorizing crap is good, blah, blah, blah.
Well FINALLY pop culture has come to my rescue. Fox has produced this show entitled "Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?" The show has so many instances of irony, it's beautiful. First, it's quiz show that is ironically hosted by international idiot Jeff Foxworthy. And second, it's a show that is made to ironically make intelligent adults look stupid because they are smart enough to not memorize useless facts.
I want to get on this show some day. "So, Mike, do you know what the capital of Alaska is?"
And I'd say, "Hell no, redneck boy. I don't care if 11 year old Jessica knows the answer. I'm a successful grown ass man that doesn't need to know that. It's either know the capital of Alaska or know what drugs interact with that St. John's Wort the cooky naturalist lady down the street takes. Lucky for her, I don't give a rat's ass about the capital of Alaska. Knowing state capitals pays jack, being a 5th grader pays jack...but being a PharmD gets me bank, baby! So fuck you and fuck the city of Juneau! I'm going to go diversify my stock portfolio, bitch."
Anyway, it's proof that elementary school, at the very least, is pointless. They had a successful lawyer that graduated from UCLA on there today. He didn't know a single damned question thrown his way. And why the hell should he? It's all useless trivia to him. He forgot all of that useless crap years ago because he doesn't need to know it, hence, his elementary school education was worthless to him in many aspects. Rather than memorizing the list of impeached presidents, he could have been hanging out at Dave & Busters or...gasp...learning about something that genuinely interests him. It reminds me of a quote my favorite movie director once gave about how he hated having the main motivation driving his education being fear of getting bad grades and, thus, punished at home:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker. - Stanley Kubrick
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Damn straight.
Another annoying thing is that they obviously got ringers for the show. These kids were definitely taken from the gifted program of the state they live in. You could tell because they were cocky and thought they knew everything. I'm specifically pissed about one thing though. Some dumbassed 5th grader wrote down that "REM" stood for "Rapid Eye Movment" and they gave him credit for it. To hell with that, "Movment" isn't a word, there, genius boy.
I'm done.
~~Apathetic~~
posted by --==-- | 12:43 AM
4 Comments:
I agree with you as much as one can agree with another. Our educational system is bullshit, and I don't care what anyone says to redeem it. It's rudimentary to the point of being obsolete, yet who has seen any great need to change it? Nobody who can or will, apparently. As soon as the first portable data-storage device was developed, the need for memorizing any sort of trivial data became unnecessary.
The answer is, clearly, appeal to interest. Instead of effectively stifling any desire children have to learn while they are barely learning the basics, we should instead seek to develop in them a passion to learn. Some of us have developed this quality, but not with any help from the system, I would say.
Schooling is a giant burden on people who are really intelligent. I hated school my entire life because I thought that memorizing stupid trivia was pointless. I can memorize data when necessary, and when it's of interest to me, but not just because somebody says "you need to know these words now and say them back to me next week."
In high school biology, the entire class all year was busy work: Crossword puzzles, worksheets, copying vocabulary words to use in sentences, word searches. All _pointless_. I did horribly because I didn't do any work, but passed the class because I got the highest grades on the midterm and final, and got perfect lab scores. The teacher tried to accuse me of cheating on the exams. ¬.¬
I hate that ridiculous Fox show, too. It should be called "Are You Just As Smart As A 5th Grader".. That's really what they're measuring.
You sound like me in high school, j-chan. The "I hate school" attitude actually led to what I feel was my finest moment. I actually got a D average in Calculus my senior year in high school. I didn't do anything all year, but the teacher started reviewing the entire class starting in April. I paid attention for one month, got a decent grasp of the material - got a 4 on the AP exam. That's good enough for college credit. And something like only a quarter of students get above a 4.
Sadly, I never got to see the teacher's reaction or brag to the asshats that only got 3s with a 3.5 yearly GPA in the class.
Oh weel, that's life.
But life is multiple choice just like the exams used to test our information belching abilities---and all in bullets. duh!!!
ps
love powerpoint.
pps
love sentence fragments
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