There is a now-forgotten quiz show in the 1970s with one unforgettable episode. One of the questions asked in the contest was: “What is the common name of sodium chloride?” The answer, of course, is salt.

The contestant, a housewife in her 30s, was starting to get jittery and that prompted the host to give her a clue. “Ito ay inilalagay n’yo sa itlog ng asawa n’yo tuwing almusal. (You put this in your husband’s eggs for breakfast.)”

The contestant’s eyes immediately lit up — like she finally figured out the name of the elf in the Rumpelstiltskin Brothers Grimm fairytale. With glistening excitement, she grabbed the microphone and shouted to the world: “TALCUM POWDER!”

Willie Revillame and ‘Wowowee’

In summer of 2010, Willie Revillame was doing his quiz show on Wowowee on ABS-CBN and this was one of his questions: “What is the name of the country where Canadians live?” One of the contestants answered: “CANADIA!”

Revillame simply laughed off the contestant’s wrong answer and dismissed it as one of the funny moments in the program.

Jobert Sucaldito, however, was not amused. Sucaldito was then hosting a radio program in ABS-CBN’s DZMM and denounced what happened in that Wowowee episode.

Revillame didn’t take Sucaldito’s criticism well. He threatened to resign from the show if ABS-CBN didn’t fire the radio host. Network executives didn’t take action and so Revillame left ABS-CBN and began his life as a Wandering Jew. He moved from network to network and is now seen on various platforms.

Robi Domingo and ‘Pinoy Big Brother’

In 2022, Pinoy Big Brother host Robi Domingo gave a quiz among teen housemates and asked for the acronym of the three martyred priests during the Spanish Occupation. The priests, of course, were Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora — collectively known as Gomburza.

Putting together the first syllables of the clerics’ given names, the teen contestants came up with this acronym: “MA-JO-HA.” Had there been a guillotine on the set that time, Domingo probably would have signed up those contestants for execution.

‘It’s Showtime’

On It’s Showtime recently, the segment “Laro Laro Pic” challenged a group of contestants to identify photos related to Philippine culture. The contestants failed to recognize pictures of arnis, Mayon Volcano, anahaw and the Philippine terno. But the most embarrassing moment came when a contestant couldn’t figure out a photo showing Malacañang.

Various clues were given, but the contestant, a 20-year-old student, dug her grave deeper and deeper with each try. “Municipio.” Of course, that was wrong. When one of the hosts gave the clue “Mala…,” the contestant said: “Malabon.”

That episode of It’s Showtime where the contestant failed to identify the photo of Malacañang is really the pits. She and the other game participants there who didn’t recognize the other images would have made a summa cum laude out of that housewife who answered “talcum powder” half a century ago.

The woman who didn’t know the scientific term of salt could actually be forgiven. Maybe she simply didn’t excel in Chemistry. But failing to identify a picture of Malacañang? No wonder netizens are now calling out the Department of Education. But which Education Secretary do we blame? The quality of education in the Philippines has deteriorated a long time ago.

The situation worsened with the advent of the Internet, which — ironically enough — was developed to make information more accessible. But not everything on Google and Wikipedia is accurate. And now, everyone has become even lazier with the introduction of ChatGPT.

Back in the day, people read books, magazines and periodicals. There were public libraries in every neighborhood. Book lovers relished every word, sentence and paragraph that jumped out of every page of novels and even biographies of significant people in the world.

People now read online. But it’s not the same. There’s something distracting about reading on the internet. Ads pop up every so often. Physical books feed the soul. Articles online don’t even stick to the brain that long for some reason.

Social media has damaged at least three generations: the millennials, the Gen-Zs and, now, the Gen Alpha. Instead of reading literary works, young people now follow the Instagram accounts of celebrities who have yet to prove anything concrete in this world. And why are they so entertained with the worthless pranks of content creators?