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.

2 comments:

  1. Quite simply because mythology refers to the actual legends and deities that make up the specific mythos,(mythology being the process of worshiping a specific mythos). Religion is the institution of religion such as rites and any system of clergy. The Christian mythos contains Jesus, the holy spirit, Mary, etc. The religion of Christianity has many holy days(rites) and a very complex orders of clergy. Religion:Mythology is to Rectangle:Square. Not to mention for the benefit of the children that they probably separated them for better studying as mythology, as previously stated, would most likely refer to the unorganized religions like Norse and Germanic paganism(neo or classical).

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  2. Oops, meant to say Religion is the institution of belief.

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