Shocking stupidity

tech77

This follows on a bit from the -5, -6 thread below.

I was just watching "Are you smarter than a ten year old" on sky one with Noel Edmonds.

A contestant, a grown woman was asked what was the verb in this sentence "The man worked really hard" and she couldn't answer it.

I was literally shocked that
1) an adult could be that stupid
2) that that adult would then appear on national tv exposing this stupidity.

I'm constantly amazed by depths of ignorance/stupidity and yet these people it would seem function perfectly normally in society.

I'm thinking to myself maybe dumb IS the new world order and the way to go.

Incidentally that show is annoying in so many ways I don't know where to start...

Karl Hungus

Yeah, clearly the verb is "The"! How could anyone be so stupid!

MagicMarker

Who the fúck cares what a verb is? I don't even remember learning about verbs in school.

leninbenjamin

yeah. i hate this culture that exists that seems to almost celebrate and revel in the stupidity that's prevalent in society.

KdjaCL

Its german for kerbs.



kdjac

gerTheGreat

Maybe she just had a crazy moment where her mind went blank. Or maybe she was illiterate? Not necessarily stupid. Did she mess up any other questions?

Outer Bongolia

I find it shocking that in these days and age the peoples seem to becoming more stupider and doesn't be ables to remember the basic level of education that can be teached at schools and colleges

Jimbo

MagicMarker wrote: »

Who the fúck cares what a verb is? I don't even remember learning about verbs in school.

That reply reinforces what tech said. How you people manage to get dressed in the morning, Ill never know. I suggest immigrating to America (or is that emmigrating)

Snarler

MagicMarker wrote: »

Who the fúck cares what a verb is? I don't even remember learning about verbs in school.

Exactly. Its probably 50 years since that woman learned what a verb was in school. Sure I barely know myself and I'm far from stupid.

Jimbo

you sure?

Snarler

jimbo78 wrote: »

you sure?

Jimbo I am very sure. If there were a classification above first class honour then I would have gotten it. Thats what we're dealing with here.

MagicMarker

Outer Bongolia wrote: »

I find it shocking that in these days and age the peoples seem to becoming more stupider and doesn't be ables to remember the basic level of education that can be teached at schools and colleges

I'm assuming you're being sarcastic? If not you may want to go back to school yourself.

humbert

jimbo78 wrote: »

you sure?

If you can't spot the verb you've got serious literacy issues. If that doesn't bother you then the you're setting the bar very low.

On a similar note, I heard them announcing that some halfwit was eliminated from X Factor on the fucking news earlier. Things can't always have been this bad. Stupidity must be becoming more acceptable.

Tha Gopher

tech77 wrote: »

This follows on a bit from the -5, -6 thread below.

I was just watching "Are you smarter than a ten year old" on sky one with Noel Edmonds.

A contestant, a grown woman was asked what was the verb in this sentence "The man worked really hard" and she couldn't answer it.

I was literally shocked that
1) an adult could be that stupid
2) that that adult would then appear on national tv exposing this stupidity.

I'm constantly amazed by depths of ignorance/stupidity and yet these people it would seem function perfectly normally in society.

I'm thinking to myself maybe dumb IS the new world order and the way to go.

Incidentally that show is annoying in so many ways I don't know where to start...

While id have got it as i was good at English, i would reckon alot of people would struggle, if English wasnt their thing. For instance I hated maths- if they had asked me on the show to identify the primary numbers, or magic numbers, primary colours, or whatever else they taught us, id be on my arse. Your average 10 year old will know it because they spend 5 days a week learning about verbs and adjectives, while personally this is the first time Ive seen a question about ID`ing a verb since I left school.

Jimbo

Snarler wrote: »

Exactly. Its probably 50 years since that woman learned what a verb was in school. Sure I barely know myself and I'm far from stupid.

Snarler wrote: »

Jimbo I am very sure. If there were a classification above first class honour then I would have gotten it. Thats what we're dealing with here.

Thats pretty impressive. Im sorry for ever doubting your obvious superior intelligence. Come to think of it Im sure Einstein himself didn't know simple english terms

Mr. Presentable

tech77 wrote: »

This follows on a bit from the -5, -6 thread below.

I was just watching "Are you smarter than a ten year old" on sky one with Noel Edmonds.

A contestant, a grown woman was asked what was the verb in this sentence "The man worked really hard" and she couldn't answer it.

I was literally shocked that
1) an adult could be that stupid
2) that that adult would then appear on national tv exposing this stupidity.

I'm constantly amazed by depths of ignorance/stupidity and yet these people it would seem function perfectly normally in society.

I'm thinking to myself maybe dumb IS the new world order and the way to go.

Incidentally that show is annoying in so many ways I don't know where to start...

It should be called "are you better educated than a ten year old?"

Apart from that, wtf would you, a smart person, watch it?

Jeebus

I find it more annoying that we live in a society where we value completely pointless stuff like knowing what verbs are, and judge people accordingly, vis a vis the leaving Cert.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

i find it annoying that people consider language completely pointless....

humbert

Jeebus wrote: »

I find it more annoying that we live in a society where we value completely pointless stuff like knowing what verbs are, and judge people accordingly, vis a vis the leaving Cert.

The Leaving Cert. is a poor way of teaching and examining stuff that is anything but pointless(referring to the core subjects, C.P.S.E. can rot in hell).

tech77

gerTheGreat wrote: »

Maybe she just had a crazy moment where her mind went blank. Or maybe she was illiterate? Not necessarily stupid. Did she mess up any other questions?

No crazy moment.
She said she had forgotten all about verbs from school..

I'll admit that I thought twice about labelling this as stupidity and thought to myself could it be excused as miseducation or whatever.
But no you'd have to not have gone to school at all to not know what a verb is.

She was in her 20's (not her 60's) and she didn't look like a skanger/scumbag or anything so i'd say so she must have gotten some kind of education.

And nobody seemed overly embarrassed on the show when she didn't know it.

I'm not talking even about knowing the difference between emigrating/immigrating as somebody mentioned above. That's fair enough.
I'm talking about real fcuking basics here.

And excusing it is worse.

Tha Gopher

The English education system is sh1t simple anyway, minimum standards are lower. Why do you think there are so many Irish uni students in the UK, yet im not sure ive ever met a Brit in our college system? I dont know what your standard of Irish is, but if it is poor an Irish speaker could say that it was laughable you could barely speak it having studied it for 12 years.

Sully

I learned about it. I dont remember it. Why? Its not something I take note of in everyday life.. as in "What was the verb? Oh I wonder.."

Its been YEARS since I did stuff like that. And I enjoyed English.

ZorbaTehZ

They have got to put stupid people on the show though, since the average person is going to be smarter that a 10-year old.
Absolutely shameful that she didn't know what a verb is /sigh

tech77

gerTheGreat wrote: »

Maybe she just had a crazy moment where her mind went blank. Or maybe she was illiterate? Not necessarily stupid. Did she mess up any other questions?

No crazy moment.
She said she had forgotten all about verbs from school..

I'll admit that I thought twice about labelling this as stupidity and thought to myself could it be excused as miseducation or whatever.
But no you'd have to not have gone to school at all to not know what a verb is.

She was in her 20's (not her 60's) and she didn't look like a skanger/scumbag or anything so i'd say so she must have gotten some kind of education.

And nobody seemed overly embarrassed on the show when she didn't know it.

I'm not talking even about knowing the difference between emigrating/immigrating as somebody mentioned above. That's fair enough.
I'm talking about real fcuking basics here.

And excusing it is worse.

Outer Bongolia

MagicMarker wrote: »

I'm assuming you're being sarcastic? If not you may want to go back to school yourself.

Honestly now, what do you think?
Sheesh.

Jesus Wept

Is there anything practical to be gained from knowing what a verb is?

Aside from sh1t gameshows and being able to point them out for the purpose of suggesting other people are stupid?

Aside from the above, does it have any use generally, or for the majority of us?

Jimbo

Maybe it's just a UK thing. I was always lead to believe that our education system was pretty good

darkskol

gerTheGreat wrote: »

Maybe she just had a crazy moment where her mind went blank. Or maybe she was illiterate? Not necessarily stupid. Did she mess up any other questions?

Well on the next question she was asked how many countries make up britain and she said one!

Toto Wolfcastle

I think that show is freaking hilarious. I think that a lot of the people start to doubt themselves because the questions seem so simple and they are scared of getting them wrong.

One woman had to pick out an adverb from a sentence and said, 'The verb is walking so the adverb must be......walking.' I don't think she was stupid, I think she confused herself. She then went on to win 100,000 pounds. She would have won the 250,000 but she didn't want to take the risk. Turns out she knew the answer. And she hadn't even done her GCSEs.

Still think it's bloody hilarious. But then, I like when people get humiliated on national television.

What I find worse is that they think that TV's most embarrassing confession is 'I am not smarter than a ten year old.' I can think of a few confessions that would be slightly more embarrassing.

humbert

The-Rigger wrote: »

Aside from the above, does it have any use generally, or for the majority of us?

Well it's practical to be able to describe the language we use every day. In much the same way that it's useful to know what a comma, period, question mark, adverb or adjective is.

Tbh, from knowing and dating people from other countries, I've been embarrassed at how comparatively little I knew about grammar and syntax.

DonkeyStyle \o/

The-Rigger wrote: »

Is there anything practical to be gained from knowing what a verb is?

It helps if you want to learn additional languages.
I found learning German difficult because I really hadn't a clue what the teacher was talking about when she de-constructed German sentences... the accusative dative, possessive past participle... what's that shít all about eh?
Then again, they assign gender to inanimate objects... they're a crazy bunch altogether Ted.

I know what you mean though... a lot of what you learned in school is 'use it or lose it' trivia in terms of putting food on the table and a roof over your head.

WindSock

It's only the Terminology I get mixed up in. I can Honestly say that I couldn't explain the difference between Nouns, Pronouns and Adjectives, etc. So I'm thick, duuhhhhhrrr. At least I still have my speling skils :cool:

one-angry-dwarf

What you're talking about here has nothing to do with being smart or stupid. It's about remembering a single piece of information that few people out of school age use on a daily basis. It's mainly memory. If she had the definition of a verb in front of her at the time I'd say she could have pointed it out fairly easily. (I hope!) People almost never ask me to identify the verb in a sentence and I'd say I could probably get through the rest of my life quite easily if I didn't know. You'd be more accurate to say she was just ignorant rather than stupid.

Although having said that, saying the UK was made up of one country is a little bit inexcusable! It's not all that surprising though. I'm studying over in Wales and it's shocking the amount of people who believe that Ireland is part of the U.K/the island of Ireland is one country etc.

Lands Leaving

The contestants on that programme are always, always morons. One question was john sleeps 8 hours a day and works 10 hours a day. what is the smplest fraction that shows how much of the day john worked for.

And the question was worded a lot better than that too!

What a joke of a programme. I love shouting at the idiots on it though:rolleyes:

Dudess

The dumbing-down of language - not helped by the emergence of textspeak - reminds me of Orwell's Newspeak in 1984.

SUNGOD

also there is a big differance between been intellegent and having a good memory ,some people can memorize certain facts and figures but have no idea how to put them into practise .and in relation to the thread heading "shocking stupidity " i dont see how anyone is shocked that some people are stupid,if we were all at the same level of intelligence there would not be terms such as intellegent or stupid everyone would be normal,equal. so in order for one person to be classed as intellegent or above average there must be people who are stupid or below average otherwise average would not exist and therefore it would be impossible to excel in either direction....................................my head hurts im going for a lie down

Lands Leaving

The thing about that programme though sungod, is that the people on it nearly always claim to have degrees, and it stands to reason that someone who went to college can do simple maths and english. But then spend a day in UCD and you'll see just how stupid college students can actually be.

tech77

SUNGOD wrote: »

also there is a big differance between been intellegent and having a good memory ,some people can memorize certain facts and figures but have no idea how to put them into practise .and in relation to the thread heading "shocking stupidity " i dont see how anyone is shocked that some people are stupid,if we were all at the same level of intelligence there would not be terms such as intellegent or stupid everyone would be normal,equal. so in order for one person to be classed as intellegent or above average there must be people who are stupid or below average otherwise average would not exist and therefore it would be impossible to excel in either direction....................................my head hurts im going for a lie down

Shocking is in the thread title because it was shocking to see.

I know some people are stupid and I accept that.
But most times it's not shocking to witness.

When she was asked it I said there was no way she couldn't know that yet she surprised me.

Also ignorance vs stupidity:
I was loathe to just label it ignorance (which obviously it is- she's ignorant of what a verb is, of course).

But linguistics is so integrally related to intelligence (and not just some "memory feat" as somebody else here asserts) that it's hard not to call it stupidity as well.

I suppose if it could be shown that she knew what parts of a sentence fall into what grammatical groups without necessarily calling them nouns, verbs etc it would be forgivable.

Toto Wolfcastle

Dudess wrote: »

The dumbing-down of language - not helped by the emergence of textspeak - reminds me of Orwell's Newspeak in 1984.

To be fair, you'd want to be highly intelligent to be able to read some of the textspeak used these days. It's evolved so much since people started using it! My 16 year old brother can send someone a long message using very few letters, yet ask him what a verb is and he'll spend ages trying to differentiate between a verb and an adjective.

EDIT:

I just texted my brother and he knows what a verb is! And he texted back in proper English with the exception of a missing 'h' in 'think'. (When he was asking if I think he is stupid!)

SUNGOD

fair comment TECH77 and LANDSLEAVING to be honest i have not seen the show so just commenting on intelligence/stupidity in general.

Pigman II

I gather by the show title alone that they aren't inviting past University Challenge champions to compete? I haven't seen the show but I'm guessing the whole point of it is that they round up a bunch of half-wits and make fools of them for our amusement?

Besides, it is patiently obvious that is possible to function in society without ever knowing what a verb is (or many other things for that matter) so why are you 'constantly amazed' OP?

Dudess

janeybabe26 wrote: »

It's evolved so much since people started using it! My 16 year old brother can send someone a long message using very few letters.

My point exactly. Doubleplusungood

The English education system is sh1t simple anyway, minimum standards are lower. Why do you think there are so many Irish uni students in the UK, yet im not sure ive ever met a Brit in our college system? I dont know what your standard of Irish is, but if it is poor an Irish speaker could say that it was laughable you could barely speak it having studied it for 12 years.

Are you joking? Literally half my class in college were English. The people who were lagging behind and had low standards in first year were almost all Irish students who sat the Leaving. I'm not saying they were all thick but I find it hilarious when people think the Irish education system is so great. My best friend's younger sister, who got a respectable amount of points in the Leaving (and got into college) asked my friend if Dutch people came from Sweden. This girl went to an expensive private school, comes from an educated family and has had every opportunity in life. People like that exist in every country. Do you really think this wouldn't happen on an Irish TV show?

Toto Wolfcastle

[quote=[Deleted User];54399232]Are you joking? Literally half my class in college were English. The people who were lagging behind and had low standards in first year were almost all Irish students who sat the Leaving. I'm not saying they were all thick but I find it hilarious when people think the Irish education system is so great. My best friend's younger sister, who got a respectable amount of points in the Leaving (and got into college) asked my friend if Dutch people came from Sweden. This girl went to an expensive private school, comes from an educated family and has had every opportunity in life. People like that exist in every country. Do you really think this wouldn't happen on an Irish TV show?[/QUOTE]

Dear God please let it happen on an Irish TV show!

In fairness, the only English person I know is an idiot. But I'm sure there are as many Irish idiots as there are English.

This whole 'not knowing what a verb is' thing bothers me though. Sure, you can get through life without it, but it's drilled into us as kids!

But as long as not knowing what a verb is doesn't put anyone in danger, (and I'm sure it doesn't) it's all good!

Terry

Pigman II wrote: »

I gather by the show title alone that they aren't inviting past University Challenge champions to compete? I haven't seen the show but I'm guessing the whole point of it is that they round up a bunch of half-wits and make fools of them for our amusement?

Besides, it is patiently obvious that is possible to function in society without ever knowing what a verb is (or many other things for that matter) so why are you 'constantly amazed' OP?

Of course.

You're going to get people lining up in their droves to appear on TV.
They weed out the intelligent ones and keep the dumbasses.

Haven't seen it myself, but apparently there is a £10,000 prize or something.

It would be worth faking extreme stupidity to get on the show. If you had a degree or something.

Jesus Wept

A degree in Stupidity.

Jumpy

Terry wrote: »

Of course.

You're going to get people lining up in their droves to appear on TV.
They weed out the intelligent ones and keep the dumbasses.

Haven't seen it myself, but apparently there is a £10,000 prize or something.

It would be worth faking extreme stupidity to get on the show. If you had a degree or something.

Its 250,000.

Its about memory not about intelligence. I can answer half the questions max and I know I am smart.
I just simply cant remember all the nursery rhymes and the specific terms we used back in school.
Ill read three books in a week and I still dont know what a verb is. I knew once, but it isnt relevant to my life anymore, so I cant remember.
If you havent watched it, then you cant comment, if you can answer every question they ask in the stressful environment they are placed in then great. Go on the show (thats to everyone commenting, not Terry).

pickarooney

tech77 wrote: »

Also ignorance vs stupidity:
I was loathe to just label it ignorance (which obviously it is- she's ignorant of what a verb is, of course).

I was shocked to see you confuse an adjective with a verb in the above sentence.

Terry

Jumpy wrote: »

Its 250,000.

Its about memory not about intelligence. I can answer half the questions max and I know I am smart.
I just simply cant remember all the nursery rhymes and the specific terms we used back in school.
Ill read three books in a week and I still dont know what a verb is. I knew once, but it isnt relevant to my life anymore, so I cant remember.
If you havent watched it, then you cant comment, if you can answer every question they ask in the stressful environment they are placed in then great. Go on the show (thats to everyone commenting, not Terry).

That was you on the show tonight, wasn't it?

Jimbo

Jumpy wrote: »

Its 250,000.

Its about memory not about intelligence. I can answer half the questions max and I know I am smart.
I just simply cant remember all the nursery rhymes and the specific terms we used back in school.
Ill read three books in a week and I still dont know what a verb is. I knew once, but it isnt relevant to my life anymore, so I cant remember.
If you havent watched it, then you cant comment, if you can answer every question they ask in the stressful environment they are placed in then great. Go on the show (thats to everyone commenting, not Terry).

Almost anyone could read three books in a week, surely thats not a measure of intelligence.
An intelligent person would be able to remember basic facts

Jumpy

jimbo78 wrote: »

Almost anyone could read three books in a week, surely thats not a measure of intelligence.
An intelligent person would be able to remember basic facts

Actually you will find the majority of the population would be lucky to finish three books a quarter.
They are not basic facts. They are facts relevant to the curriculum you are studying. You will find most people watching will go "Ohh yeaaaaah, thats right" when the answer is revealed, but had no clue to that point.
My workmates were having the exact same conversation about how they would so win it easily, then I asked them "What was the name of Moses wife?".
None could answer. Without googling, can you answer that question?