A Plug for Knowledge

Recently, Marty's been bemoaning the fact that the people he works with don't place much value in knowledge for the sake of knowledge. As a matter of fact, they ridicule him, saying he knows too much. They keep telling him to purge. We thought maybe this was a function of the nature of his business, manufacturing. You have to know certain things to make and sell stuff; beyond that, what's the point? But a friend from New York writes that he's sometimes belittled for the breadth of his knowledge, and he works for a publishing company. They call what he knows "trivia," because they see it as worthless.

Give me a minute to climb on my soapbox. I'm a little rickety these days.

Okay. It seems that it's no longer cool to know that a quotation comes from a play written by a guy named Shakespeare, or that 1066 was the year William the Conqueror had his way with England. I guess if all you know are the quotes and dates, that you've never actually read the play in question or understand the impact of the Normandy invasion, then what you know are facts, and I can see an argument for them being trivial. Rhode Island was recently shocked by the news that 80% of its 11th graders aren't proficient in math. Oh, the obligatory hands were wrung, but not too many people seemed overly concerned with this. In fact, there's an essay on the editorial page of today's Providence Journal that refers to the woeful test scores, written by a member of the governor's task force on urban education. Incredibly, he argues against learning algebra and geometry, noting that he hasn't had need of these disciplines in the last 50 years, and that a "prominent RI businessman" learned all the math he needed to know in elementary school. Did these gentlemen (apparently not scholars) ever try to figure out the area of a round baking pan to see if it could be substituted for the square pan called for in a recipe? I'm pretty sure you need to use geometry.

Can't we just learn something because it's interesting or fun, something we can perhaps discuss with fellow human beings when we're hanging around? Does everything we learn or know have to add to our bank account or improve the gross national product? Maybe this explains why there are so many dullards walking around scraping their knuckles on the ground. Why bother to read a book or an article when it will just add to that useless heap of knowledge? Did you ever try to read something one of these non-readers writes? Its you're life. Myself will shut up know so you can wach American Idle.

Had enough? Here's a little more you don't need to read, but I hope you'll want to. My son participated in the RI Academic Decathlon yesterday. It's not really his thing, but he was persuaded by his mother and his physics teacher that it would be fun. Mark won two bronze medals, one in math and one in science. He thinks he could have done even better in math if he'd remembered to bring his calculator. He said it was exhausting, but incredibly fun. His school placed fourth overall.

I'm done.