OK, wanted to share.
First, I love "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader". Like Harry Potter, it's teacher porn for me. (Teacher porn: media that enacts a teacher's teaching fantasies: what teaching would be like in an ideal world.) I watch, answer the questions, and imagine having a classroom full of those cute, smart little kids. Anyway.
Last show, there was a young woman (very young, just out of high school), competing on the show. Valedictorian, student of the year, Honor Society, etc. The question that was her downfall? Who did England fight in the Hundred Years War?
Now I am a history buff, especially Western Europe, especially the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, so I am not saying that everyone should have known that. (Well, I am, but whatever.)But what made me groan was her reasoning. She focused on Spain (not irrational, just wrong century), but discounted France, on the grounds that 'they're not very good at wars, and I don't think they would have lasted a hundred years'.
This is what all this mockery of the French has done for us. I mean, I can't say that I like the French much, but this hoopla fantasy that they're the biggest losers of military history is now making high school valedictorians flunk out on 'Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?'.
Freedom fries indeed.
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Haha, indeed on the hundred years war thing. That's like, the funniest thing I've ever heard. Seeing as how we won against those ruthless russians on their own territory in the Cold war and how the war of 1812 was not an american war (Sarcasm on both) I can totally see how someone could confuse such a very "minor" war. Haha, indeed. I like history...
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