Are you smarter than a 5th grader?

I'm not entirely sure how I ended up watching this program tonight, but it's a new game show on the Fox network. It's pretty dumb. I won't say that the contestants are dumb, since most of them are around 30 years old and thus haven't been in grade school in some time. However, I was able to successfully answer all but one question on my own. So, I dunno. Maybe the pressure of a studio audience adds to the problem of forgetting things.

The dumbest thing though is that when they're eliminated, they have to say, "I'm not smarter than a 5th grader." I don't know if most people would remember some of these things, since a lot of education at that level is based on memorization and continual reiteration. And you don't necessarily remember all of the details along the way, but rather use all of it as building blocks to get to the next point. Also, if you end up doing something that has nothing to do with a subject such as astronomy, are you really going to remember stuff that you learned 20 years ago? Probably not.

Anyway, it's a pretty dumb show and not something that I will be trying to catch the next time around.