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• Wednesday, August 29, 2007 08:20 PM

  The Answer Was Confusing, the QUESTION was Stupid

  How the hell is a teenage beauty pageant contestant supposed to know why Johnny can't find the U.S.? Unless one has read the details of the study, is a school teacher or a researcher, the average person would be pulling an answer out of their ass. Was that the point of the question? Here, contestant, make up a plausible answer to a question you, nor most of the people in the audience, know anything about.

  Know what the correct answer is?

  "Well, I believe this reflects the continuing tendency of researchers to use unclear and vague methodology when they survey students. It would have been easy enough for them to ask the students to point out all 50 states in the U.S.A., but they did not, even though they knew that many schools still use maps with U.S.A. printed on the first 48 states. This way they create a study that people will cluck about, and will subsequently bring in more money for more crackpot reasearch. I'm sorry, I know you want me to say that today's students are just stupid. Or maybe that geography is not taught in many schools, but this study does not bear that out."

  The answer given by the contestant reflects the fact that she didn't know how to pull herself out of a potentially embarassing situation by just asking to have the question repeated. No biggie.

  And I would have just loved it if she had simply said. "How the heck I am supposed to know? Should I just make something up?"

  —flyover52 Read flyover52's other letters
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