One of the best pieces of advice that I've ever been given, and one which I've passed on to more younger people than I care to admit, is "you can never know too many things." Knowing things is valuable, and even more valuable is to be able to know enough facts, to recognize facts, so that you can tell valid information from vapid nitwittery. I was fortunate indeed to have a father who pushed me to read; he had me reading classical Greek philosophers in my early teens, he fostered my interest in the sciences, in literature; I'm still, to this day, realizing just how profound his influence was.
He felt, as I do, that knowing things is important. A British educator, Dave Summers, agrees, and in a piece at the Daily Sceptic, he makes some good points about the value of knowing things - and notes that the British education system, much like our own, is not teaching knowledge.
You know who wrote To Kill A Mockingbird, don’t you? Tell me you do. And up to this year, the majority of my Sixth Form students taking part in my Christmas quiz would have done so, also. It was always a nailed on gimme in a test of general knowledge with which – alongside munching our way through a tin of Celebrations – I’ve traditionally finished the year. Let me be clear here: this is no head scratcher of a King William College Christmas Quiz, that beast of a challenge that the Guardian publishes each year; there is no “Where was the Lionheart incarcerated by der Tugendhafte, whom he had earlier insulted?” in my quiz. No, “What is the capital of India?” is more my level of interrogation in a hastily composed ragbag of questions on geography, history, literature, film and sport.
Granted, I'd probably fail badly on the sport topics. Sportsball has never been an interest of mine. The only sport I've ever watched was pro rodeo, and mostly because my cousin rode bulls for a while, until he was thrown and messed up his back.
But the topics of history and geography? Those seem like obvious things an education system would want to instill.
The History and Geography rounds are equally dispiriting. “Who was the Prime Minister at the beginning of World War Two?” fares better than the Mockingbird question, but there are enough blank stares in the room to suggest that what I would consider to be essential historical knowledge is missing. I suspect that if I asked them to name a black nurse from history, they’d all shout, “Mary Seacole!” in unison. The same goes for Geography: while my students are no doubt familiar with the looming (for the past 30 years) threat of ice cap collapse and the ‘settled science’ of rising sea levels, few could tell me that the Indian Ocean is located to the east of Africa and west of Australia.
The point being a valid one, yes, our systems of education, on both sides of the Atlantic, are teaching young skulls full of mush a lot of twaddle.
What are some of these things that a well-informed person should know? Well, I'm just a guy in his sixth decade living out in the woods in Alaska, but I have some thoughts. How about learning Aristotle's laws of logic? How about who Eratosthenes was, and what he did in the 3rd century BC? How about learning what the Socratic method is, and who it is named for?
Speaking of geography, why not learn about both physical and political geography, modern and historical, and all of the implications the movements of borders and peoples have had on history?
Speaking of history, why aren't young people today reading the Constitution and the Federalist Papers in school? Why aren't they learning who Thomas Paine was, who Samuel Adams was, and what roles they played in our revolution?
Speaking of sciences, why not learn about mammals, about the sexual dimorphism of mammals, especially humans, and what implications they have? That's something that plenty of people need education on, and badly. Why aren't young people today able to name the constellations and the key stars found in them?
If you have a young person in your life and you're still thinking about Christmas presents, well, buy them a book. Not any of the pap and pablum that too often passes for literature these days; buy them something of inestimable value, like Sir Winston Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples, or Aristotle's Organon.
Knowledge is the forerunner of wisdom. It's a commodity that's in short supply today; just look at most of our elected leaders. It's not too late to learn, once more, as a people, the value of knowing things.
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