Learn-able Moment (From) - A Vignette

[Chris_Wendt]

Another little chat with my granddaughter yesterday, while drying-off in the sun on the pool deck. I asked her how she was coming along in her quest to "know everything". She said "Okay". I guessed that she must ask her parents a lot of questions. She said, "The only thing I actually ask my parents for is food, but they give me information, too." I followed-up by asking, "So where do you get all the rest of your information?" She shot me a quizzical glance and quipped: "I have a computer." Of course, this is a bit of an exaggeration, given that she is only 5-and-a-half*, and although she has a middle-school vocabulary, her spelling ability is appropriate to her actual age, which is 5-and-three-quarters*.

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While this was cute, it is also cautionary on two notes:

1. The reliance by her generation on electronics, e-media, and self-gathering of knowledge will be unprecedented, and a real threat to, or opportunity for, traditional public education.
   
2. Stuff on the computer and on the Internet is often wrong, and more often slanted. Even at her tender age she is aware of this fact and has some modicum of skepticism about stuff she reads or learns online. But she is only a kid, who has no idea of what she does not know at any given moment.

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* We chatted about her age, and when we got to the proper fraction (five and a half, or, five and three quarters) she became uncomfortable and chided me: "You're not supposed to talk about my real age!" Stupidly, walking in to the next barb, I asked "Why not, do you want people to think you are still only four?" Get ready, here it is:

"No. I want you to think of me as nineteen."

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Her motto, at age five plus a fraction: "That's my thing...to know everything!"

Warmly,


Chris Wendt