Reading Copy Book Blog

C’mon America - get it together.

A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”

Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”

The book in question is Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 10:21 am and is filed under author, books, life, reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.