Sunday, January 23, 2011

Quiz Bowl

I am the coach for our school's quiz bowl team. It is similar to Academic Challenge. We compete against schools from our conference mostly. A match consists of 10 category rounds, an alphabet round and a lightning round. The category round is self-explanatory. The alphabet round is random general knowledge questions where every answer starts with a designated letter. The lightning round is also general knowledge but you have to be the first to buzz in with the correct answer.

I was going through the rules for our conference finals and came upon this:

The match will conclude with 20 questions in a Lightning Round. The
questions will be drawn from the previous ten categories (American Literature, Mathematics, World History, Fine Arts, Life Science, English/World Literature, U.S. Government/Economics, Physical Science
World Geography, U.S. History) as well as mythology, spelling, popular culture, world religion, world literature, philosophy, earth and space science, quotations, and theater.

I was wondering why they kept mythology separate from world religion. It is quite strange exactly how many religion-based questions come up and how few are answered correctly. When the kids don't answer (much of the time) I look at them in awe. The majority of the students I run into are not believers, but I don't think it is because they have read of all the absurdities and contradictions in the bible.