Test the Nation - The Great British Test

Confucius

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Did anyone else participate last night? Or are you all too busy appreciating foreign cultures to bother about your own? ;)

Anyhoo, I felt it lacked the 'spark' of previous quizzes; perhaps the studio audience should've had a few drinks prior to transmission.

I got a rather feeble 56/75 :eek:

Mind you, there were some questions that struck me as being a bit 'random', rather than something one might genuinely know. (Percentage of tea drinkers, for example, or number of pints served daily.)

Test available online here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/testthenation/
 
I watched it with my wife. I scored 58 and she 59, which is about 78-79% each. We both watch a lot of general knowledge programs (such as countdown, weakest link and university challenge) and often do the pub quiz thing, which does help with the retention of facts etc.

I am often surprised with the lack of general knowledge exhibited by a lot of my work associates etc. I was asked once about 3 years ago why we were having a 2 minutes silence on armistice day :(
 
Makes me look really dim then, i only got 44!!!
 
Originally posted by Confucius
Did anyone else participate last night? ......

Anyhoo, I felt it lacked the 'spark' of previous quizzes

I think you answered your own question. ;)
 
Yes, I found that particular "females" perspective on the UK to be somewhat flawed.

But then again, this is part of a wider problem were being learned and aspiring to better ones self are considered "uncool" by large parts of the population.

Because being a dense, blinkered, disenfranchised, generic, "John Doe" is so much "cooler" :rolleyes:
 
Originally posted by Xusia Of Delos
But then again, this is part of a wider problem were being learned and aspiring to better ones self are considered "uncool" by large parts of the population.

I thought the name of the show was "Test the Nation", not "Teach the Nation" ? :confused:

Should iamtheone rush out and re-educate himself? He got a lower score than both of you did. Perhaps he's interested in things other than endless quiz shows - possibly this is why you beat his score?

Quiz-type programs may be higher-brow than "Reality" tv shows, but that still doesn't make them everyone's favourite idea of telly entertainment either.

Before you say it, I believe I do exercise my brain everyday, I just prefer not to through the medium of television - I use the box as an excuse to veg-out and escape instead.
 
I recognise all your points. I was merely drawing attention to an increasing group of the population that have knowledge gaps (and I don't specifically mean the general knowledge displayed in the aforementioned program) and are not at all bothered by it.
 
Originally posted by Xusia Of Delos
I was merely drawing attention to an increasing group of the population that have knowledge gaps and are not at all bothered by it.

I had lunch with a teacher-friend yesterday and some of the stories he told me about kids and their parents attitudes to schooling were :eek: :eek: :eek:

I'd be up on GBH charges on my first day as a teacher I reckon. :(

It is nice to see that at least they are advertising classes on the telly (those ads with the little Gremlins :smashin: )for adults who can't read, to get back into it. Wonder what the take-up is?
 
Well I just did the test on-line, having not seen any of the questions or answers previously and scored 60/75. And I'm a 2nd generation immigrant! :)
Obviously more British than many of the native indigenous British (whoever they are anyway) ;)
 
In fact the hardest question in the on-line version is what is your favourite food? :) Too many good things to be able to choose only one!
 
I think the 'knowledge gaps' as you so kindly put it, may have something to do with my age, im 23 and i suspect that the majority of people who participated in the quiz would be older than myself, and also the other people who have responed to the post on this forum. I don't consider myself a genius, but then again i'm not a brain-dead inbred with 7 toes either, just an average joe.
 
I got 38. Almost my age.
 
41 for me.

Which is a surprise as my general knowledge is well known to be much worse than that.

I generally have problems with questions that relate to dates or tv.

As for history, i never took history at school and find the whole subject, apart from maybe the the Great War and WW2, really boring. Maybe I was just never exposed to history in the right environment. Def not while i was at school any road.

Saying that, history should probably be a set subject like maths and english. I have absolutely no idea who the last two kings/queens were before the current and no idea who was prime minister between churchill and thatcher.

One of my mates knows tons of stuff like this but he's got his own set of problems, he once chucked a gf because she didn't know the meaning of the word altruism. Funnily enough he's never had a gf for longer than 2 weeks :p
 

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