# Are you wiser than a 5th grader?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-wiser-than-a-5th-grader/540175
**Category:** The Game Room
**Created:** [May 20, 2010, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-wiser-than-a-5th-grader/540175 "2010-05-20T20:09:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 23

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### Author: ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2010, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-wiser-than-a-5th-grader/540175/23 "2010-06-03T16:12:23Z")

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> [@Why is ignorance of age not an excuse?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ignorance-of-age-not-an-excuse/538677/479):
>
> There is absolutely no way that even the most precocious eleven year old could pass as a sixteen year old, still less eighteen, in any serious conversation. They just don’t understand things in the same way as adults.
> 
> Simple but famous example - get them to consider a starving man stealing bread to feed his family. They’ll all claim it is wrong (except for the sociopathic bastards that so many of the child “geniuses” turn out to be, who won’t even understand that concept)… they just don’t get shades of grey.

So I asked Bricker Jr this question, and he said: “It’s sort of wrong, because whoever had the bread should get to keep it, but a good man could still be good and steal it. You know, like Jean Valjean did.”

(I should point out that _Les Miserables_ is on my iPod, and gets played when he’s in the car, so he knows the whole story – or at least the whole story from the musical.)

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