Yeah, but one that was a self-selecting poll from the viewers of UK TV Gold, IIRC. Not sure about this one though - I hope it’s of similar low quality. Still, it’s mighty depressing.
I played “famous people” charades a few years ago with a bunch of people from Belfast. The rule was “nobody obscure”. I put in “Stalin” and got told off for including “someone nobody’s ever heard of” (pron. “Stay-linn”).
Why doesn’t the article linked in the OP give me any information that might help me go check out the study it references myself?
-FrL-
I’m skeptical of these kinds of things. I saw one a few years ago showing a huge percentage of Britons couldn’t name the city that the film Chicago was based in. I mean come on, how could that be? I think people create these polls with the intention of showing how stupid people (usually Americans) are and then they go out and get the results that match their initial bias. We rarely hear about methodology with these kind of things. One exception was a survey done about 15 years ago that showed about 1/3 of Americans doubted the Holocaust was real. It got a lot of attention until it was discovered that the only way a respondent could say the Holocaust was real was to agree to a double negative.
With one in every eight people in America being foreign-born I wonder what the polls do with people whose English isn’t so good?
I agree. I wonder how many people Leno needs to interview for ‘Jaywalking’ before he gets enough idiots for his bit. It never shows anyone getting those questions right, does it?
Yeh, yep.
“Do you believe it is impossible that the Holocaust never happened?”
:smack:
-FrL-
ETA: And keep reading for the results of another study which asked that question as well as a more clearly worded version.
Ten feet tall?
Another vote for skepticism with such surveys. They are published regularly, in many countries, and are usually started with the clear intention of showing how stupid people are because that makes better headlines for papers.
I remember that a German TV show which puts together clips from other shows had one clip a few years ago which they would repeat over and over. A candidate in a quiz was asked a question something like: “Which ancient god of war had the same name as a modern chocolate bar?”
The candidate’s prompt answer was: “Snickers.”
Of course it’s fun sitting on your sofa making fun of that guy’s stupidity; but I guess many of us would face problems with a question which we could answer without any problems straightaway if under pressure (TV cameras watching, the clock ticking, etc.)
Not exactly the same as with surveys such as the one the OP refers to, where presumably you have more time to pick your answer, but similar.
I also remember reading a newspaper article a while ago complaining about such surveys. The author’s argument was that, all in all, the amount of knowledge which average people possess nowadays far exceeds the knowledge of average people in any previous era of history. Until well into the 19th century, even most scholars renowned for their learnedness knew practically nothing about sciences - their canon consisted of their country’s history, ancient Greek or Latin, and the books of a few classical writers. This is something of which many people today do not know much, but they know a lot more about things such as science or mathematics, and even geography and foreign politics. It’s not as if people had gotten more stupid over time - the emphasis of what you are expected to know has shifted.
I would be hesitant to believe those statistics.
There is no specific study referenced- good reporting/ research rules would lead me to question those numbers.
And even with the sciences, it’s easy to make people look or sound more stupid than they are. Just asking them to describe lunar and solar eclipses, verbally, will often do the trick. (Try it.) Doing so, without reference to models or diagrams, is something they’ve never needed to do, even if they learnt about eclipses in detail when at school. I’ve even tried this one out on teachers who deal with the topic regularly, and without the usual props, they can find it quite tricky.
No idea, I’m just pissed they didn’t know the battle from LOTR was The Battle of the Pelennor Fields
I take your general point, but the specific example is puzzling.
“A solar eclipse is the kind that happens when the moon passes between the earth and the sun. A lunar eclipse is the kind that happens when the earth passes between the sun and the moon.”
Seems a pretty straightforward thing to say, assuming understanding of all the diagrams etc. from elementary school.
-FrL-
“But doesn’t the moon pass between the sun and the earth once a month, sir, and didn’t we do that last week, with the phases of the moon? You said it was called a new moon.”…it’s trickier than it appears at first!
What I don’t understand about these ‘man-on-the-street’ type surveys is how they avoid people answering stupid things just because they think it’s funny. I mean, I know a lot of random trivia and I do well on exams in school (usually), but if some guy comes up to me on the street, what’s in it for me to answer accurately?
I can see this being especially true of surveys of teenagers or kids. If someone had asked me and my friends at 16 who William Shakespeare was, we may well have said “Why, he’s the king of England (tee hee)!” and then gone home and laughed about it. Of course we knew who Shakespeare was, but teens are like that sometimes.
Somehow I doubt homeboy plowing his fields or working in the factory in past times was any more literate.
I always find it sort of odd that people think that there was a time when people knew more, considering that adult literacy has been a problem for as long as I can remember. I guess that in and of itself is a form of historical illiteracy. Ironic that.
Hmm… that doesn’t seem to make my answer look stupid, but rather, seems to make you look difficult. 
-FrL-
Rather than make my response difficult, I could have made it more helpful. Or, I could have simply told you that you were wrong. Or marked you down as ‘wrong’ on a survey.
FTW.
-FrL-
I agree with Meyer6 that people were giving wrong answers for a laugh, especially if it was multiple-choice and all the wrong answers were so obviously wrong.
Then again, I’d never heard of the Battle of the Boyne and I don’t know what a lunar eclipse is!