Are YOU smarter than a Canadian 5th grader?
Tuesday and Wednesday this week the casting call for “Are You Smarter Than a Canadian 5th Grader?” came to Calgary. We won’t know until September how many (if any) children from Alberta will land a spot on the TV show and get a free ride to Toronto for the taping. Hundreds showed up for the audition, going through the rigorous Nintendo games room and watching previous episodes of the show.
The greatest part of this story is what I got to do…quiz people. Nothing shows the intelligence of the people in our city like a game show. I’m not saying that we are all dumb, I just love going out and finding people (like myself) who can’t answer questions that they probably could have in Grade 5.
So I created a 660 quiz with questions I knew the answers to but also received a set of sample questions from the producers. The answers to some of the questions should be common knowledge, so it’s always fun to hear people get them wrong.
Before you start getting angry at me for making fun of kids, I assure you these answers given were from adults only. I would never embarrass a 10 year old for forgetting what part of a plant carries nutrients and water from the roots to the other parts.
I was amazed when I asked some people around our station how many provinces and territories there are. Can you believe someone got it wrong? If they miscounted the territories because of the not-so-recent addition of Nunavut, I could understand…but this person claimed there were 9 provinces and 2 territories. I will keep their identity hidden so they won’t get red faced, but if you were listening at 5:30 Tuesday morning you’ll know who it is.
Here are some other gems. One of the parents I talked to couldn’t name our first Prime Minister, another thought the Edmonton Oilers have won the most Stanley Cups in NHL history and there were too many people who didn’t know who’s face is on our twenty dollar bill.
While these questions seem simple, don’t think the game show is going to be easy. Some of the sample questions I received include “the words, mine, yours and his are known as?”, “what is the name of a 5 line poem which varies in rhyme and line?” and “who governed the early Egypt civilization?”.
If you can answer those without looking it up, you have better Jeopardy skills than I do. Hopefully for the rest of us, when we see “Are You Smarter Than a Canadian 5th Grader” we will all be looking over our children’s text books.