by Jeff Tompkins

Created on: April 21, 2008

Another poll has been released showing that Americans are stupid. These come out every few years, exposing us as a people who do not know the most basic aspects of history, science, math, etc. (The "etc." is listed because sometimes people don't even know what subjects they know nothing about.)

The point of these research polls is, I guess, to shed light on our dysfunctional education system. That, or simply to uncover new and exciting ways to make jokes about average Americans. "You expect people to understand the tax code? They can't even locate the United States on a map!" (It's right next to the ocean.)

I am a product of public education. I remember having to memorize the states and their respective capitals. Sure, I can't remember all of them now, but I don't need to know them now. I only needed to know them for the test. And even then, I only needed to memorize about thirty of them because the other twenty fit nicely on a small cheat sheet. I also remember having to learn the Pythagorean Theorem. That's a mathematical formula by which you can find out how long one side of a triangle is. Or two sides. I can't remember. What I do know is that I have never had to use this in real life. My geometry teacher told the class that it was helpful for figuring out things like how tall a flag pole is. I don't remember what she said after that because I was sitting there trying to figure out why I'd ever need to know how tall a flag pole is. Maybe if I went to work for a flag pole company or something, but you'd think they'd just put a label on the box.

There was also an obsession among history teachers about dates. What year did Ferdinand Magellan discover America? What year the colonies declare independence from New England? When did Abraham Lincoln deliver the famous line "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"? What year did Lee Harvey Oswald walk on the moon? Stuff like that.

That Americans can't answer these questions is no great indictment of our intelligence. It just proves that we discard superfluous information. There are, however, some basic things that we all remember, because they are important.

For instance, we all know that our first president, Benjamin Franklin, chopped down a cherry tree as part of a series of experiments that led to the invention of the telephone.

We also all know that it takes the sun one month to revolve around the earth. However, during a leap year (which happens when the groundhog sees his shadow) the opposite happens, and

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