OxBlog

Sunday, May 13, 2007

# Posted 10:25 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

IS OXBLOG SMARTER THAN A FIFTH GRADER? My high school physics teacher was fond of saying that "No one ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the average American." As if to test that proposition, FOX has unveiled a new game show entitled "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" in which contestants answer the same questions as a handful of actual fifth graders who are also on the show.

(Attention international readers: American fifth graders are usually ten or eleven years old.)

Speaking as a political scientist, I have a fair amount of confidence in the American people to make good decisions at the polls. (For some evidence, see here.) At the same time, I am well aware that the average American tends to display considerable ignorance of what educators consider common knowledge. I am also bristle at casual accusations of European acquaintances that Americans are apallingly ignorant.

Thus, I felt compelled to watch "5th Grader" and see how Americans would perform when the bar was set so low. Strangely enough, the first contestant on the show turned out to be a Yale graduate. He breezed through the initial ten questions, working his way up to half a million dollars in prize money. Then he had to decide whether he would risk it all on one final question worth $1,000,000. If he got it wrong, he would walk away with only $25,000.

Two previous contestants walked away with their half a million rather than losing 95% of it. But the Yale man took the plunge. In theory, the question he had to answer was something that a fifth grader might now. Personally, I thought the question was considerably harder than that. But that may just be a defensive reaction to the fact that I got the question wrong.

So, do you know what was the name of the first American satellite to orbit the earth? I guessed Gemini. That was wrong. The Yale man guessed Mercury. That was also wrong. Still don't know what it is? Then you'll find the answer here. (This morning I asked my Dad if he knew the answer. He got it in around four seconds. But he has a Ph.D. in molecular biology.)

The initial ten questions were considerably easier than the final one. For example, the Yale man made it to half a million by identifying the author of Common Sense as Thomas Paine. That's an easy question, but I still think it may be above the level of a fifth grader. As if to make that point, four of the five fifth graders on the show got the question wrong. Another question that I thought more appropriate for a junior high schooler or above was which of the following particles is not found in an atomic nucleus: a proton, a neutron, or an electron.

Disappointingly, the adult contestant who got that question had absolutely no idea what the answer was. This contestant was a veterinarian's assistant, age 26, and she was just plain awful. When asked what city is home to the United Nations' headquarters, she had no idea. Luckily, all five fifth graders knew the answer, so she was able to "cheat" off of them.

Curiously, this woman was not just exceptionally unaware but also very, very hot. Which made me wonder whether the show's producers chose contestants on the basis of their entertainment value, rather than some approximation of either merit or average-ness. It's the same with a lot of reality shows. They don't choose contestants who are the most real. Rather, they choose the ones who have just the right combination of good looks and social dysfunction.

So all in all, I'm not sure if "5th Grader" says anything about the American people, except that we encompass both Yale graduates and pretty bubbleheads. But it does raise the eternal question of how democracy can function if those who vote don't possess a certain amount of basic knowledge about what they are voting for. Although I don't have citations at hand, I have read some rigorous surveys that document the failure of a representative sample of Americans to identify basic political facts, such as which party has a majority in Congress.

Some of those surveys also demonstrate that Europeans tend to have a better knowledge of things such as the name of the UN Secretary General or the president of Russia. If you wanted, I guess you could argue that that is evidence of Europe's greater political wisdom, although it would be a stretch.

After all, even the most educated people often have diametrically opposed views of what makes good policy. Pick one blogger from the left and another from the far right, and they'll both know who's the president of Russia and who's the secretary general of the UN. Clearly, something other than a knowledge of facts determines one political preferences. Yet no one seems to know what that something is.

In the meantime, we'll just have to stick by the least profoundly flawed of all political systems, good 'ol democracy.

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(8) opinions -- Add your opinion

Comments:
FWIW, my dad worked on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, and I got it wrong.

Sputnik would have been a much better subject for fifth graders to study. After Sputnik was launched, some juniors at John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory conducted telemetry experiments with it to determine its ephemeris. Since they could predict the position of a satellite, they reasoned that they could solve the inverse problem and determine the position of a receiver. Three years later, the Navy's Transit navigational satellite system for submarines was in the air. And this was the genesis of today's GPS.

Or you go with the provincial Explorer.
 
Speaking as a political scientist, I have a fair amount of confidence in the American people to make good decisions at the polls. (For some evidence, see here.)

But Page and Shapiro are talking about collective public opinion, not individual opinion. For them, some individuals can be ignorant and inconsistent (e.g., the hot veterinarian's assistant) so long as they are balanced out by some who are smart and consistent (your fellow Yalie). This is similar to James Surowieki's, The Wisdom of Crowds. In short, the American public aggregates well. (Both rely heavily on Condorcet's jury theorem.)

Also, Page and Shapiro are talking about public opinion not voting. The public can be rational (rational in their case being reasonable) in terms of the opinions it holds, but still make horrible decisions at the polls. See here.
 
I agree with Zachary--up until his last paragraph, where he flies off the rails and cites some book by a libertarian economist complaining that lots of voters inexplicably fail to agree with libertarian economists about everything.

As for European vs. American knowledge of the world, it'd be interesting to investigate how many reasonably well-educated Europeans would be astounded to discover that game shows select their contestants for entertainment value rather than skill or representativeness. In fact, I believe contestants are becoming increasingly savvy about their roles. Not only do they show implausibly high levels of pep and enthusiasm, but on low-IQ shows such as, "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?", they've started putting on suspiciously long "gee, this is really hard...I'm not sure" acts, even on easy questions, before "guessing" the correct answer. I'm starting to suspect that at least some of them managed to fake out the producers by hiding their trivia skills until the real competition, to avoid being weeded out.

(By the way, I knew it was called "Explorer"--and I'm not even American.)
 
Explorer I, baby. I knew that when I was a fifth grader, too. I loved reading about space and aircraft. I still have some of the old books lying around.

The key word was satellite, not manned spacecraft.

Maybe I should get on that show :)

On the topic of public ignorance, the average person in any country really doesn't know much outside their specialty. I don't know much about fixing cars, but luckily someone does.

No one is an expert in everything, and looking down on people for not knowing about your own specialty is unfair.
 
I agree with Zachary--up until his last paragraph, where he flies off the rails and cites some book by a libertarian economist complaining that lots of voters inexplicably fail to agree with libertarian economists about everything.

Well, consider me back on the rails. My point in citing Caplan's book was not to support to his overall normative argument--that voters should think more like (libertarian) economists--but the data which indicates that voters often make decisions inconsistent with the majority's preference. If you would like more data on this point, see here (where you will also find that individuals often cast votes inconsistent with their political preferences).
 
John Lynch is right - An average citizen anywhere is ill informed about pretty much everything,

America is no different. But, America is lucky because it continues, due to her relative freedom and opportunity, to attract the best minds from around the globs. Including [gasp] from France.
 
But, America is lucky because it continues, due to her relative freedom and opportunity, to attract the best minds from around the globs.

Oy.

Never blatantly misspell when writing about intelligence.
 
I've only watched this show once or twice, but I've found the questions could range from rather easy to ridiculously hard. The thing is, there is so much pointless information in 5th grade science textbooks. Random facts that it would interesting, yet completely unnecessary for the layman to know. Some of those questions worry me more - not knowing where the UN HQ is is bad, because everyone votes (or should vote), and the UN is a part of foreign policy. Not everyone is a molecular biologist. A vet's assistant not knowing the location of protons, neutrons and electrons doesn't worry me in the slightest.
 
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