We were watching a game show called "Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?" and then came the question on English subject: Count how many adjectives there are in this sentence: "After playing in the hot sun, he drank two glasses of cold drinks." Or something like that.
TWO!!! We all screamed with utter confidence. We were so sure, this is a show called "Are you smarter than a 5th Grader?" after all. Alright, the contestant proceeded to answer "three". We were convinced she's going to lose the money she earned. The host revealed that three was indeed the correct number. We were all stunned.
"Two" is an adjective. There are quite a few adults in the room and all are dumbfounded. How could we not know? It's ingrained in the mind that when we say adjectives, we think of word that modifies a noun...words like cold, hot, sunny, red, etc. Little did we know that number is a modifier as well. Two modifies glasses. I am sure this was taught in my primary school. It totally taught me a lesson.
We, grown adults, are not wiser than a 5th grader, or a 3rd grader. We are brainwashed with fixed ideas of our world, presumptions of our environment and of people, rendered inflexible with our social parameters, ingrained with knowledge of things that are supposed to make us more educated yet powerless when confronted with questions a 3rd grader can answer easily.
What makes it so?
More tomorrow...
1 comment:
I read somewhere that we all go to school with questions and we come out with fullstops.
We cease to be curious about the world. We became confined and comfortable with our established notion of the world, and become stuck.
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