Are you smarter than a 5th Grader?

Last night there was a televisual hole after Futurama and before House started so I started watching Are You Smarter Than a 5^th Grader? While I remain very concerned that they couldn’t just flip two words around to make it Australian school centric rather than further Americanising our culture I thought that maybe it would be OK. It is very popular in the USA. I was busily admiring the set and the cute kids who all seem very bright and Rove had a t-shirt on that looked a bit like “The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Kray” but I couldn’t see it properly so all in all it wasn’t off to a bad start. In all the ads for the show, when they were giving sample questions they just seemed so easy that I was wondering how the show would keep up the suspense.

Then on came the adult contestant. I wonder if they trawled Australia to find those that had a distinct sub-par intelligence level? The questions that were posed were so tricky, for example “What degree of latitude is the equator?” of course the man involved didn’t seem to know that it would be 0, but the grade five boy did. What a big surprise. Oh dear, I think that I can see where this quiz show is going. There were a few more, very drawn out questions all of which the contestant had trouble answering but the kids knew really very quickly. Even I knew the answers! The kids were having trouble not rolling their eyes at the stupid adult.

The extremely unfunny and formulaic ending had the adult contestant turn to the camera and say “I’m not smarter than a 5^th grader” * Cringe*. I’m afraid that I had to turn off the tele after that. I couldn’t watch the rest even for the SESA readers because I could feel myself getting stupider every moment I watched the show.

Verdict: Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader is a good way of lowering your own IQ if you were feeling a little too intelligent that day. It also might be good to make your kids feel even more superior to the adults in the room.