Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
Question: Which program is in Guinness World Records
as the world's longest running TV quiz show? Answer:
"It's Academic," a Saturday morning program for high
school students. The show has aired in the
Washington area for fifty years. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton competed on it when she was a
teenager.Teams from local schools answer questions
on subjects like history, literature, math, science,
religion, politics and sports. Susan Altman is the
producer of "It's Academic." She says "It's a great
age group to work with. They're fun, they're
enthusiastic, they say funny things without even
meaning to half the time."Ms. Altman's mother,
Sophie, was a TV producer in the nineteen fifties.
She started "It's Academic" after local school
officials asked her to create a program that showed
outstanding students. Susan Altman says "At that
time -- nineteen sixty-one -- the United States was
going through a lot of upheaval with school
integration, and they wanted things to help out to
make the schools look good and to show that
integration could work and work well. So this is
what she came up with."The show's host, Mac McGarry,
says "When we first started, the young people from
various countries were not evident so much. Now,
each program presents young people from all over the
world, at least descendents from people all over the
world." Mac McGarry is eighty-four and has hosted
"It's Academic" since the beginning. He says "Every
time I look up, I see people who are just seventeen
years old, and somehow I think, well, I must not be
growing older at all. Their enthusiasm is
contagious, no question about it."More than twenty
thousand students have appeared on the show. Mac
McGarry has asked more than two hundred thousand
questions and gotten more than a few funny answers.
"We had a question one time: 'Who defeated Napoleon
at Waterloo?' and the young fellow answered Duke
Ellington. Another time, we had a question of 'Who
along with Frederick Engels wrote the Communist
Manifesto?' Groucho Marx!" The correct answers, of
course, are the Duke of Wellington and Karl Marx.
Rockville High School in Maryland has won the
championship on the show several times. Kelly Reeder
led the team last year. "My friends who are on 'It's
Academic' think it's cool that I'm the captain of
the A Team, but my friends who are not on 'It's
Academic' think it's kind of funny." You can find a
link to a video about "It's Academic" at
voaspecialenglish.com. For VOA Special English, I'm
Alex Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
