Evolving Knowledge

Apes are large animals that are related to...elephants?











I think I'm developing a teaching-induced phobia of paper. There are just so many assignments to grade. I'm organized, to be sure. I have colored coded paper clips (thank you Office Max) and all the papers are in discrete piles per grade. But even the most organized mounds still cause chills.

So when a second-grade teacher sat down next to me at lunch, flustered by a pile of vocab tests, I offered to help correct the exams. "Do you have an extra copy of the answer key?" I asked. She laughed as she slid me half the stack. "What's so funny?"

I unsheathed my red pen and went down to business, and I was soon in on the joke. The test was deliciously easy for me, an adult. Cavern. Torch. Spear. Planet. If only the GRE in Literature was this easy!

Most of the kids got over 90%. But one student really struggled. Spears have blades on the end, not hooks. Torches are used for light, not climbing. And apes are related to monkeys, not elephants.

I remember distinct times in my life where I thought, "I know everything there is to know." I always knew there were random facts outside my grasp, but I thought my main intellectual prowess was complete at, say, age 10. Again at 16. And yet again at 21. It's hard to realize that becoming smarter is not just about facts rattling around in your brain; it's about the actual process of manipulating those facts in intellectual situations.

I looked down at this young second-grader's test. There was once a time when I was unknowingly capped by such a ceiling: a ceiling where simple animal nomenclature challenged the very limits of my knowledge.

We often disregard children as unknowledgeable, but we should cherish that ignorance. Students are microcosms in which teachers have the good fortune to witness, first hand, knowledge in its primordial state: full potential waiting to burst forth into destiny.

Maybe he should have studied harder. Maybe he should have practiced his test taking skills. But really, I have no worries for this student. He's just a mentally clumsy kid waiting to evolve into a genius.