GENERAL KNOWLEDGE QUIZ OF CHAMPIONS

‘The room was filled with an air of outright distrust, cynicism and total bewilderment.’

What do you get when you put twenty-six enquiring minds in a room together and ask them to answer some General Knowledge Quiz questions? Answers. You get answers – long answers, short answers, wrong answers, right answers, more-or-less-right answers, ‘out-of-left-field’ answers, questions as answers, and at times, no answers at all. And who would have thought that one could fit the word answer so many times into a grammatically correct sentence?

Side note: Did you know that the phrase ‘out-of-left-field’ is an American saying that means ‘unexpected, odd or strange’, and has its origins in baseball?

http://www.knowyourphrase.com describes this scenario: A batter hits the ball and there is a base runner sprinting towards home plate. In this situation, the base runner would be facing away from the left field. So, if the left fielder scoops up the ball and throws it to home plate, the runner would be unable to see it, thus it would catch him by surprise.

This is how we learn stuff; the irony, of course, is that the aforementioned phrase was not included in the quiz.

The General Knowledge Quiz of Champions featured twenty-six learners (in teams) from four different local primary schools. The day started with an ‘icebreaker’ of Epic vs Fail videos, where the learners (just for fun) had to guess whether a video would indeed be either an epic win, or an epic fail. This opener allowed our ‘quizees’ to have a little laugh, settle-in and get their ‘academic juices flowing’.

But what is it that is so amusing about watching other people fail though?

We moved on to a multiple-choice round (that we like to call Multiple Guess) which begged the question, “What is tattooed on Popeye’s forearm? A spinach can, a ship, an anchor or a heart?”, to which came the reply, “Who’s Popeye?”. I kid you not – there were some who genuinely had never even heard of the guy. I was flabbergasted.

It’s an anchor by the way.

The morning moved swiftly on through various types of quizzes, from a Quick-Fire-Questions round (like, who lives in a pineapple under the sea?), to Maths, Famous Landmarks (Machu Picchu stumped most), and Famous People.

Now, ‘Famous People’ is fairly straight-forward – put a picture up of somebody on the projector and determine who they are or where they’re from etc. So, we breeze through the likes of Trevor Noah, Oprah Winfrey, Zendaya, and Mark Wahlberg. Enter Charlize Theron.

The question: In which country was this actress born?

The answer: “Who’s that?”.

I once again, kid you not.

The morning’s ‘brain-training-session’ culminated in the all contentious ‘Fact or Fiction’ round. Yes, that says all contentious. Here’s why:

Fact or Fiction: The body of a shark contains no bones. Fact. Sharks are cartilaginous, which means their skeletons are made from cartilage. But wait…

“Sir, sharks have teeth which contain calcium. Bones also contain calcium, therefore, sharks technically do have bones.”.

So, I’m all like, “Well my dear, that’s a fair point. I’m by no means a bones expert, nor am I a calcium expert, nor am I a shark expert. This is just what the interweb told me. Therefore, this question is null and void, and will not count.”

Moving on.

Fact or Fiction: Humans only use 10% of their brains. Fiction. Humans do not only use 10% of their brains - they use all of their brains all of the time.

Oh, my, goodness. Things just got proper real. Like proper. The kids start looking at each other in complete and utter disbelief. They look to the gallery of parents and teachers at the back in dismay. They look at each other again in absolute suspicion. They look to me for any signs of a joke, or a hint of a “Nah, I’m just pulling your leg guys”. In fact, their looks (at me) were more like ‘How dare this guy bring these lies before us? This is an outrage!’.

The room was filled with an air of outright distrust, cynicism and total bewilderment.

So, I’m all like, “Look kids, humans use all of their brains. You’ve been told lies; that 10 percent thing is just a myth, it’s hogwash, just nonsense, complete rubbish.”

However, one person in the room was not okay with this and insisted that it is not a myth, you know, because of neuroscience and stuff.

So, I’m all like, “Okay, well look, I’m by no means a doctor, nor am I brain expert, nor am I clued up on the current affairs of neuroscience, but psychology ‘says’ that the different parts of the brain are responsible for controlling different regions of our bodies, and nerves, and feelings etc. And also, the interweb said so. But it’s all good, we’ll just scrap that one from the list and move on, no worries.”

We moved on.

Fact or Fiction: Woodpeckers eat brains when they get too hungry. Fact. Woodpeckers have been known to ‘peck’ through the heads of baby birds to get nourishment from their brains. (Gory I know, sorry.)

But here’s the thing. This particular fact goes without question. Nobody even ‘bats an eyelid’ at it. Not one person seems even a little bit concerned that something like that might even be remotely true. Nope. Not one. Everybody just accepts it. Like, (and I imagine here), “Well, that actually sounds quite reasonable old chap” or “You know, Mother nature and all that” or “Well, it really is just survival of the fittest out there isn’t it?”

Yet, you tell some people that we, as humans, use all of our brains all of the time, and everybody loses their minds. Fact.

But having said that, and to quote Ron Burgundy from Anchorman (look it up kids), “I ain’t even mad, that’s amazing!”. What’s that you ask? The fact that the learners were questioning the validity of what was being told to them, and that they weren’t just blindly accepting what some guy they just met wearing a suit and tie was telling them.

It’s furthermore amazing in that it hopefully got those ‘academic juices’ flowing even further, beyond the confines of the classroom and the quiz itself and ‘out there’. In addition, with a bit of luck the learners went home, logged onto search engines and looked-up some of the answers in more detail, especially the contentious ones.

We hope that the twenty-six enquiring minds that we met at our Open Day will continue questioning, investigating, querying, exploring and ultimately learning.

And lastly…

Fun Fact: If you were to fold a piece of paper in half 45 times, it would reach the moon.