I’d like to use a lifeline, please

If you’re looking for yet another sign of where we’re going as a culture, a recent Washington Post article offers a sobering view from an unexpected venue: the TV quiz show.

Spurred by the inexplicable popularity of the new “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?,” Post writer Paul Farhi compares the modern, dumbed-down genre spawned by “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” with the classic quiz shows of the 1950s, which set a rather high standard for their contestants’ knowledge of the arts, history, literature, government and science, as well as popular culture. Even though many of them were proven to be rigged, the old shows were based on the principle of rewarding people for being extraordinarily smart and knowledgeable. The new ones celebrate mediocrity. Here’s a question worth $100,000 on “5th Grader”: “A decagon has how many sides?”

By modern standards, “the intellectual content of the 1950s quiz shows was downright erudite,” writes Thomas Doherty of the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Intellectual content? You don’t even have to be able to recall any specific information these days. The new “Millionaire”-style quiz shows are multiple-choice affairs where many of the possible choices are clearly absurd. And if that’s not enough of a hint, there are “lifelines” or other gimmicks to drag you to the right answer. Sure, the questions get progressively tougher, but games are set up so a contestant can walk away with a tidy nest egg without having to face anything more challenging than, say, a 5th grader could answer.

“We have less of an expectation of ourselves that we’ll learn rigorous material today,” said Steve Beverly, a broadcasting professor and expert on TV game shows. “We have accepted a degree of mediocrity in education. We don’t really want to work too hard to achieve success.” It’s not just schools that deserve blame. The media and entertainment industries celebrate and institutionalize a culture of lowered expectations, and government advances social policies that encourage people not to think for themselves. I’d like to believe we’re better than that, but I’m starting to doubt it.