According to the article "Common Stock" by Cullen Murphey, there are many people in today's society who either know something about everything or everything about something. The article utilizes games like Jeopardy! and Go to the Head of the Class to express the knowledge that people in today's society possess. The article talks about how different a person's common knowledge can be. It shows this by asking a number of seniors a series of questions, but the seniors can not answer the majority of just common trivia questions. If the same questions were asked maybe fifty years ago, the majority of the questions would most likely be answered. This is supposedly an example of how today's society, especially in America, has declined in it's sense of common knowledge. The article also explains how a publicized study showed that 80 percent of seniors at elite colleges and universities scored a D or an F on a survey on American History. It explains how these students could not tell what the Gettysburg Address stated, but 99 percent of those same seniors could identify the television characters Beavis and Butthead. The article then changes routes and explains how there is also people in today's society who know everything from " the implications of more than 30 handshakes" to Musical Canine Freestyle. Obviously, this passage by Murphey explains the different levels and ranks of knowledge in today's society. It certainly discusses and addresses knowing something about everything versus everything about something.
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