Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

Fifth graders are 10-11 years old, otherwise know as first years in my embarrassingly out-of-date nomenclature. There's a strangely addictive TV show on Fox at the moment called, as the name of this post suggests, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Obviously it's a trashy TV quiz show modelled after Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, but what makes it both amusing and literally screamingly annoying is that all the questions are taken from 1st to 5th grade school exam questions - i.e. primary school questions. The subjects are drawn mainly from the usual suspects: science, reading, math (sic), but also specifically U.S. geography and U.S. history. Without jumping to gross conclusions, this hints as to the reason for the general ignorance about the rest of the world exhibited by U.S. citizens. But that's not the point, the point is that I generally end up shouting at the telly (I realise this is a bad sign) when a history teacher answers the question "Which U.S. state was named after a British king?"* with the gem "New York", while his mate in the audience confides "I think it's New Jersey". It's amusing to watch the contestants thinking aloud "A man goes swimming 3 times a week, how many times does he go swimming in 11 weeks? I'm pretty sure I know this, erm (looks around at audience for moral support) yeah I'm sure I know the answer, I think I've got this, erm (clasps hands together nervously), I'm going to kick myself if I get this wrong, yes I'm going to lock my answer in, I'm pretty sure that I think I'm positive the answer is 3 x 11, 33!" And then claps himself along with an ecstatic audience and looks soooo proud. I'm sure that if I went on the show I'd get stumped on an embarrassingly easy physics question, but it doesn't negate the fact that the show is nothing more than an infuriatingly watch-able celebration of mediocrity.

I'm going to make the prediction here and now that this TV show will be illuminating British living rooms before the year is out.

* Just in case anyone got stuck, it's Georgia.