Subject: How Smart Are You?

Are you as smart or smarter than a fifth grader? Can you outwit a fifth grader who has crammed facts before appearing on a TV show?

It seems, according to stories circulating on the Internet, that the fifth graders on the current “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader” TV show read crib notes before appearing on the show. How else can you explain the fact that they all answered a question about a relatively obscure president correctly?

In a recent show a “30 or 40 something” female contestant struggled with the following questions:

On what continent does the giant panda live?

After taking time to think about the answer she said “Asia”. Where else would the giant panda live in the wild? Africa?

If only she could have answered the following question correctly. Then she could have taken $500,000 home, rather than $300,000.

Please name the only continent that is also a country?

After giving the question some thought, she gave up and decided to cash out. When pressed by the host to say what her answer would have been she answered “all of them”, and then chided him for grilling her.

One must ignore the fact that the question was flawed. The answer that the host was looking for was “Australia”. Technically Australia is a country. Australasia (or Oceania) includes New Zealand and the South Pacific island countries as well.

There are many simple bits and bytes of information that one forgets about since elementary school days; however, shouldn’t most educated citizens of the world know where pandas live?

Images source

If you have not seen the film and have high speed internet, get some popcorn, sit back and relax… because this clip serves up the whole film!

My Life in Pink is a rare find, a truly original, compassionate story about recognizable human beings (MARGARET McGURK, The Cincinnati Enquirer)