From a marketing perspective, there’s a brilliant new game show on TV called Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? The host, Jeff Foxworthy, asks adults questions from topics covered in grade school. The adult can rely on a 5th grader for help up to three times.
For example, Foxworthy asked what constellation the Big Dipper is in (Ursa Major). Another question asked which bone in the human body is the largest (the femur). All of the 5th graders allegedly knew the answers.
Clearly, our kids are being taught a lot of useless crap.
I try to imagine a situation where I would need to know the name of my largest bone. I suppose I might someday be in a museum when a pack of wild dogs attacked, and someone would see me standing next to the exhibit of early human skeletons and yell “Quick, grab a femur and start swinging!” But realistically, I can count on one hand the number of times anyone has asked me to hit a dog with a femur.
During the time that 5th graders are learning how much a leg bone weighs, I have to wonder what useful information they are NOT learning. I wonder if anyone ever died because the first person to arrive at an accident scene knew the location of the Big Dipper but not CPR. I’m thinking it had to happen at least once.
I wonder if 5th graders are taught that attractive people generally do better in their professional lives. I don’t mean to be cruel to the kids on that show, but at least one of them has been eating too many cheese sticks while memorizing the names of bones. It’s not a good career move.
I’ll bet that most schools don’t have a class on how to recognize bullshit when you see it. What could be a more useful skill than that? I have to wonder how many people who are able to name all of the past U.S. presidents have shaved their heads and joined cults. I’ll bet it’s a few.
If it were up to me to add some classes to the grade school curriculum, I think I’d put more emphasis on these skills: public speaking, risk assessment, bullshit detecting, social skills, decision-making, managing your own body, and influencing people.
And CPR. In case I ever need a 5th grader to revive me.