How . Dumb . Are . We?

This is not at all fashion-related, but as I went to AOL to check my e-mail, there was a link to a 10-question quiz, "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" It had the subheading, "These are surprisingly tricky!"

Sadly, I was curious, so I went to see just how tricky these questions might be. Then I discovered questions such as,



What is the plural of deer?
a. Deer's
b. Deeres
c. Deer
d. Deere's

It makes me nervous that someone writing for a major online site thought something like this to be a tad on the difficult side, and I'm a little afraid for the US at the moment, because adults having trouble with this type of question would seem to be a major lapse in education. In fact, fifth graders having trouble with this would be a big "uh-oh" sign.