The downfall of society: If nobody believed me before, they will now.

I just turned departed from the living room where I spent the last few hours mucking around flipping between channels on the television. After surfing the channels for a while I started watching NBC’s The Office and was delighted as it always entertains. During the commercials of any show I’m watching, I always check to see what else is showing. Let me tell you that nothing was different this evening.

As I was searching I came across a show called Are You Smarter Than a 5^th Grader. I had heard about this show and how lackluster it was so obviously it piqued my interest and I immediately tuned in to watch it instead. To say I was completely utterly shocked and appalled at this horrible bit of tripe is putting it extremely lightly… They put children on stage to HELP the adults who are clearly in need of it! My God… If this crap that Fox puts on the air is supposed to pass as entertainment then there is something exceedingly wrong with society. (I will illustrate that later in this post, as well as the many to come)

Now, I shouldn’t say it was not completely unentertaining. I say this because seeing stupid people, moreover, the stereotypical dumb American adult being bested by a 10 year old is damned entertaining to me. Now I’m not just ragging on stupid American’s because Canada isn’t far behind in the lack of education and its number of illiterate children and adults. Illiterate has 2 I’s by the way. In case you missed the show last night, some guy had to guess how many I’s were in that word. He did get it right, but only after wasting 5 minutes thinking about the answer and debating whether or not he should ask the 10 year old for help…

Before I go on, I must say that I’m your standard 26 year old male. I’m not a genius and I do not claim to be. I’m of average intelligence with an average IQ. Or at least the IQ tests I do on the internet at 3AM say I’m average, and I’m fine with that. I did attend a tech school for 3 semesters, but left for reasons I shall not go into. I don’t have a degree or certificate from a university or college, but I do have my high school diploma. I do know more about some subjects than others, and less in other subjects than others. There you have it. I’m the standard all round average Joe. Perhaps I’m selling myself short, but I needed to paint this picture before I go on. But I digress…

As I sat there watching this drivel I will admit that I was amused at first. But then after watching for roughly 10 minutes I found myself becoming angry at this show and the people on it. Not the kids, I loved kids. You could see in their eyes that even they couldn’t believe how stupid these adults were.

I sat there watching and becoming more and more furious at the show! So furious in fact that I had to call my best friend and tell him how mad I was at this crap. Not just the show, but the fact that it showcases really stupid people and the obvious lack of education they received!

One of the first questions asked was along the lines of “What ocean surrounds the North Pole?” Obviously the Arctic Ocean immediately popped into my head, and thought he’d get it right away. I guess I was wrong because this apparently isn’t common knowledge! The young man had to get help from the kid?!?!? What the hell? How can you not know this? After this moment I had to turn the channel as I was too far into my disbelief that I had to stop and come to my own senses before I fell into a deep stupid hole of my own.

After a few more minutes of watching The Office, curiosity got the better of me and I turned back to watch more stupid folk. This time there was a lady. The guy obviously got one of his easy questions wrong and was booted. The first question I saw her field was asking how many adjectives were in a sentence they had posted up. Now I’m not trying to be condescending or anything, but if someone reading this doesn’t know what an adjective is… An adjective is a word that describes, identifies or quantifies a noun or pronoun. Striped, hideous, small etc are all examples of an adjective.

So the screen pops up with a sentence, I read it and quickly identify 3 adjectives. It’s not that hard. At least I thought. It’s as if this woman had never learned rudimentary building blocks of English. Well the answer was obviously 3, and after a few minutes of humming and hawing she guessed 3. She didn’t know for sure, she GUESSED 3. Wow, I’m thinking this is one very dumb broad. And then the next question came...

Now… I must preface this to one of my previous statements. Do you remember my comment about the typical stupid American? Well, if there was ever a perfect example of stupid, as God is my witness, this would shine through like the Cheshire Cat’s teeth. The question read “What country is directly north of the U.S. border?” Of course its Canada, but apparently again I’m wrong and this isn’t common knowledge… SHE DIDN’T KNOW! She HAD to get HELP from the child! My God man! How on earth does she tie her shoes in the morning? What, did she think Communist Russia was there? Or perhaps a myriad of small countries like there are in the middle of Europe. Could it be that there is just ocean directly above the good ole USA? Maybe the Moon is there? I mean come on! Canada is the second largest county in the entire world! The kid new instantly and thank God otherwise this lady would have gone home empty handed. It’s at this point that I shut the TV off in utter disgust and called my friend to complain.

Do you see what I mean? Shows like this are saying it’s ok to be stupid because you will be rewarded in the end for being a dumbass. And to say this is simply a product of a poor American education system would be a false statement as Canada is right there beside them. It’s just there are no shows parading stupid Canadians. If there was a show, we as a people would look just as dumb.

Yeah, the world needs people of all kind, and this includes stupid people. But the trend is showing that intelligence is severely lacking and going in a steady southern direction. I know it, you know it, and I think most everyone else does too. But to showcase it in an international forum is an incredibly idiotic thing to do.

Normally I don’t write stuff like this, but I was compelled to write something after I saw this crap last night. Eventually, I plan on actually writing a book about what I believe is the downfall of society and education is going to be a major part of the book.

Comments are as always welcomed.