Lack of "general knowledge"

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I came across a blog article about Fox's latest lame reality show, "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?", and the blog writer was ranting about how people's brains should be "on the side of a milk carton" because they can't name all of the Great Lakes and they don't know what state Mount Rushmore is in.

And here's the thing: I consider myself to be a pretty intelligent person, but I honestly didn't know those facts off the top of my head. Throughout my school career, I've excelled at reading, writing, and math (although I hit a brick wall in the latter subject when I got to Pre-Calculus), but history, geography, and science have always been my downfalls. And judging from some articles I've been reading, I seem to be one of many people who attend or have graduated from college, and have respectable IQs and test scores, but are lacking in "general knowledge".

What can I say? I guess memorizing facts for the sake of memorizing them has never been my forte, and I can't say that I've ever needed to know such facts off the top of my head for any reason other than passing a test. I'm a journalism major, and while having a lot of general knowledge certainly doesn't hurt in that field, the only skills you really need are writing, interviewing, and research. If I don't know something, I can just look it up. And while I do think it's wise to have a basic idea of the important names and events in your country's history, I don't really see the importance of knowing the dates and locations of every battle in the Civil War.

Part of me wants to blame the schools for focusing too much on said dates and locations, and failing to find a way to make students interested in these areas, but a lot of it probably is just apathy on my part. Maybe it is time for me to stop being so self-absorbed and broaden my understanding of the world. But at this point, I'm not sure if I know where to start.

I do, but that's because American history is one of my "special interests." September 22, 1862- Antietam. I'm such a Civil War geek... Anyway, I also seem to have a lack of "general knowledge." And a lack of common sense. I love memorizing facts, though. It's one of my (few) talents. I do agree with you that schools only tend to certain peoples' learning styles. If you aren't good at visual-spatial abilities (me), you probably aren't good in geometry. If you aren't good at memorizing facts, you probably aren't good at history. The teachers are incapable of showing students different ways of seeing the material, so if you don't get it their way, you're screwed. They don't understand about how Aspies may not get it the "neurotypical way."
-OddDuckNash99-

In the unlikely event you will need to know these things that fall under 'general knowledge', I am sure not knowing will be of no consequence. I consider knowledge to obey Darwinism, namely that we remember what we need to e.g. a materials engineer will not remember the 4-digit code for bananas, and a clerk at a grocery store will not remember the bulk modulus of steel.

Don't worry about it, there are more important things.

Well, I meant "important" in the sense of needing to know these things in order to have a place in society. There's certainly nothing wrong with being a geek of any trade.



I did find geometry to be harder than algebra, though not as hard as college pre-calc. As for memorizing facts - the thing with me is that I often will memorize lots of "useless" facts about things I'm interested in just by reading about them. But it's just really hard for me to force myself to memorize lots of facts about something, even if it is something I'm interested in.

I think I am going to make a little bit of an effort to gain (regain?) some basic elementary-school knowledge of history and geography. But I would agree with AlexLawson that it's not as big of a concern as some people make it out to be.

I haven't heard of that show but it sounds really lame. Of course a 5th grader who is learning those things in class and writing about it and doing homework assignments about it is going to know the answers to things like that. Most adults aren't going to know those things because they have long forgotten.

Yeah, the show sounds really stupid. From what I'm hearing, they're pretty much casting stupid people on purpose, and the point of the show will pretty much be to make fun of people for knowing less than a fifth grader. I'll pass on that one.