Dumb Britain?

Joan np

Just in case it's not clear, I mean get a team of five together and apply to go on Eggheads!

I'm too far away, and anyway my brain shuts down under pressure. I'm forever searching for a name or place in my brain, when I know I know it but it just won't come. Then I remember when it's too late.

Ok Jeni that's two of us Are there three more out there?

We just to have a good range of General Knowledge between us.

I might be interested. But I'm not an egghead.

So, judging by the fact that my post has been blanked the lack of response, no one else is up for a GN Egghead Team?

Shame

Ha Ha absent. We were in tears of laughter despair when they were informed their answer was three hundred years out.

Lilygran What the Dickens are these young people coming to?

On Breakaway today: Who married Catherine Hogarth in 1836? Answer: Henry Vlll

And it either drifts off into the ether or gets buried under mounds of other stuff.

I've also heard that George Bush was correct in this case.

The fact that the young can access any information any time does not let them off learning some basic facts. Then they can then question the truth of the information they receive via these channels.

It is a common fallacy that looking at amusing moving pictures on a screen is learning. It is not the optimal process for the brain. To get the stuff into your long term memory you have to do more that.

If you had tried to run a business in France you would know that George Bush was closer to the truth than he knew when he said there was no word for entrepreneur.

I'm up for it!

How about getting a GN team together for Eggheads?

If they have to remember a script for a school play, they usually manage pretty well, Ariadne. My 8-year-old GS has a fly-paper memory for almost everything except where he has left his shoes/games kit/ bike...

According to Mr absent, I once got very close to a million pounds on Who Wants to be a Millionaire in my sleep – we had a television in our bedroom in those days. I was propped up with my pillows and fell asleep somewhere during round one. However, I moved into a deeper level of sleep somewhere before the end of the show and stopped answering, so we shall never know.

Ariadne, that's quite a frightening thought - that young people have minds empty of knowledge because they don't need to remember anything!

I went on Fifteen-to-One as a contestant back in 1997, egged on by family as I always did quite well in TV quizzes at home. Ashamed to say I was the second one to go off! I got through the first round when one person was out, but was the first out in the next round. Ironically, I knew the answers to almost everyone else`s questions. William G. Stewart had an idiot board to read off, even though he said the same things on every show. And it took just over 2 hours to record a 30 minute programme.

(This is specifically about young people - I still can't believe the stories about TV quiz shows...)

What the young have, and we didn't, (and some of us still haven't discovered) is the ability to access any information, at any time, anywhere. And they don't need to remember it, and stuff their heads full of useless trivia, because it is instantly accessible.

So - are they "dumb" (hate that word) because they don't know, or bright and up to date because they know how to find out?

Theseus and our team recently won a quiz hands down, and it was fun, but I still think we should be wary of instantly castigating the young.

There's a tv prog called Coach Trip, I'm sure some of you will have seen it where couples get on at various points in Europe and then they all get the chance to vote each other off. On the last one I think a mother and daughter got on and were ejected quite soon. The mother was amazingly ignorant although they were travelling around Europe she had no idea where the different countries were located, or anything about them. Didn't even know where the UK was in proximity to mainland Europe, when someone took her to task about this, she said "I don't need to know where it is, that's the pilot/driver's job"

Perhaps they are just curious about different things from us? Jeremy Paxman says he finds the students on University Challenge astonishingly knowledgeable on many subjects, but incredibly ignorant on others.

Stupidity and ignorance aren't the same thing. I don't consider myself stupid because I couldn't answer any quiz question on Eastenders. In fact, I don't think I'm stupid even though the list of topics I know nothing about is much greater than the list of topics I think I do know about. What surprises and shocks me is lack of curiosity on the part of the young.

I had a cleaner who was going on holiday to Benidorm. I said, 'Oh, Spain, have you been before?' She replied, 'I don't know, we just book through the agent'. She was a fund of very funny anecdotes and great company, but almost totally uneducated.

Oh yeah Sarah Palin forgot her gaffe "our allies, North Korea" and I think there were a few more from her as well. Scary woman! Americans (some) can be parochial. I don't think Sarah Palin did geography at school, someone should buy her an atlas. Don't forget how many Americans have never had a passport, I guess a lot of them feel that it's all there everything you could want to see is in America. Most of us in the UK have been abroad these days.

Sarah Paiin added a whole new dimension to stupidity.