Is the country getting dumber?

[Playbill]

I have just watched a short part of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' on itv. It was bad enough when an 'it assistant' was unsure if Zulus were from the southern hemisphere. But when a school headmaster calls for help to find out in what part of the country the Mendip hills are, you begin to understand why kids are so dumb these days. The fact that the headmaster was from Devon did not seem to help him! Glad I normally only watch itv during the Grand Prix season.

[Myriad2112]

Where are the Mendip hills?

[jake-the-peg]

Why? Lottery winners win huge sums for the ability to tick boxes!

You've already pointed out that most quiz shows are no better than lotteries.

Mind you I'm not going to miss the University challenge final on Monday

[Chillum]

I recently went through an audition for "Millionaire". A good score did nothing to help me get through. I left having no idea at all of the criteria that they were looking for in a contestant. One of the things I did do beforehand, though, was swat up on British geography, so, yes, I did know where the Mendips were.

[Le Chat]

I understand both sides of this.....but as a headmaster, you would expect him to have a broad general knowledge, which would include some geographical interest.
You would expect him to know the answer to a question pertaining to Kings&Queens of England, so why not geography on his own doorstep?

[sp1814]

I remember watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire once and not being able to answer the following question:

Which Premier League football team play at Stamford Bridge?

It was something like a �200 or possibly �500 question.

For 90% of the population, this was an incredibly easy question, but for someone who doesn't follow football - impossible.

I suspect that if you have no particular interest in a subject, any question would be difficult to answer, and doesn't necessarily speak to your overall intelligence.

[Chillum]

May well be Raggy. I've only seen one show where the contestants were taken from the auditions rather than the usual phone & text, and they were absolutely abysmal (though I do think the pressure could easily scramble your brains on the night).

[China Doll]

I generally consider myself to be a relatively bright spark when i want to be. However I have a terrible memory for books I've read, films I've seen, places I've been (diections in general actually and dates, peoples names and probably what I had for breakfast this morning. This being the case I am terrible at answering general knowledge questions.

However if reminded I generally can talk (usually at length) on the subject although it will inlude such intellectual sayings as 'thingy mabobby off the telly who wrote whatdoyoumacallit, you know who I mean,' luckily many of my friends speak China Doll fluently these days; unluckily I suspect that 'thingmabobby...' responses to questions on telly might not get me very far even if I do know what I mean!

[Lucy Thomas]

The point here is this. This man is a headmaster. He is in charge of the education of our children. The question on WWTBAM is, in my opinion, basic knowledge. If he struggles with this he is unsuitable to be a headmaster.

Imagine if a pupil in school had asked "Sir, where are the Mendip Hills?"

[Lucy Thomas]

A contestant on WWTBAM was once asked "Which county play their home cricket matches in Chester-le-Street." Unbelievably, this question was for �500,000. The contestant immediately refused the question on the grounds that she didn't know a single thing about cricket. Stupid woman. You don't need to know anything about cricket to answer this question. You only need to know that Chester-le-Street is in Durham. Again, basic knowledge.

Can I please have �500,000.

[LoftyLottie]

I am amazed that so many people are so unaware of the geography of their own country - and yes I know where the Mendips and am not local to that area.

One of the interview tests where I used to work was one British Isles geography - a simple test of a map of the British Isles with some numbers on it and a list of major towns which you had to correctly allocate to the numbers on the map. It was essential to the job that people could allocate locations against area officer. It was only us oldies that could do it.

I don't agree that people in this country are getting dumber but for some reason people have a lot less general knowledge. I do agree that a school headmaster should be knowledgable about quite basic facts of British geography.

[LoftyLottie]

and several errors in my posting are not because I am dumb, purely typing too fast and in a great hurry!!

[SeaJayPea]

Lucy, that Chester-Le-Street question was the first ever for �1million. It was a Welsh bloke called Peter Lee. See below:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/60944 6.stm

Otherwise, right in every detail.

I don't know if I'd sack the headmaster for not knowing it. He's probably embarrassed enough already. See if you can get hold of Private Eye and read the Dumb Britain column. There are examples in there every week of completely idiotic replies, like:

Eamonn Holmes : What is the name of the playwright commonly known by the initials G.B.S?
Contestant: Er.... William Shakespeare

Anne Robinson: In traffic, what "J" is where two roads meet?
Contestant: Jool carriageway.

And so on

[nightmare]

on the topic of contestants on "Who wants to ...",
I am amazed when the initial selection question is "Put the following words in alphabetical order", and in many cases , fewer than half the contestants get it right.

[Playbill]

Thanks for all the comments. I am not saying I would have been able to answer every question that could have been asked. But how basic does your knowledge have to be before attaining the position of a headteacher? The guy must have looked at a map at some time in his life. Perhaps this is why when my teenage daughter had to go somewhere in Hampshire, she asked me what county that was in. They are not being taught the basics. For those of you unable to find Hampshire - it's just south of Milton Keynes :)

[LoftyLottie]

100% agree with you on that Playbill. The basics are just not being taught at school. However, children can be taught such a lot by interested and interesting parents . I would be appalled if my children didn't have basic knowledge of the geography of their own country. I would also be appalled if they didn't know the location of the majority of the countries of the world.

I have known people go to the Canary Islands or Malta on holidays and not even be remotely interested in where they were!!

[dundurn]

I've never heard of Millionaire contestants being selected in any other way than phone/ text entries.
I did once get through to the second stage of the phone process. The 100 people selected at random were all contacted and given 30 seconds to answer a "nearest to the bull" type question. In my case it was "how many test runs did Graham Gooch" score in his career. Knowing that his average score was down in the 30s (don't ask why I remembered that) I guessed way too low, forgetting what a long career he'd had. I watched the show I would have been on and
1 all the contestants were men
2 none of them seemed to know much about anything other than cricket

[Chillum]

dundurn, the audition method was by internet entry only. Fill out the form, say a bit about yourself, then, if selected, you had to travel to a specified location (Glasgow in my case), answer a series of general knowledge questions, then be interviewed on camera by on of the producers...Funnily enough, they don't seem to be doing it any more, for some reason. I did the same for "Duel" even more recently...didn't get through that one either.