07 September 2006

On Knowing Stuff

I just heard a funny story about a little boy in Columbus, Ohio and it goes like this: A traveler came along one day and said to the little boy, "My boy, where's the road to Cleveland?" The little boy says, "I don't know." "Well, where's the road to Cincinnati?" "I don't know that either." "Well, could you tell me how to get to Toledo?" "No", says the little boy, "I don't know that either." Then the man looks at him rather disgustedly and says "Well you are an ignorant little boy aren't you?" To which the boy replies, "I may be ignorant, but I'm not lost!" One of the great things about children is their willingness to communicate and try stuff out. They are not afraid to say, "I don't know" and yet they seem to have such a clear view of things. It's refreshing, frankly. They seem to be born with this right from the start. In so many ways they are superior to us older folk in their ability to candidly interact with the world around them. I've been watching the TED presentations that, little by little, are being put online and one of the best talks I've seen so far is the presentation on education by Sir Ken Robinson. It's only 20 minutes long, so take a lunch break and "give it a go." If learning is important to you, I think you'll really enjoy it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

David - I've been silently following your blog for a while now, I think the material is great - please keep it up!

Thanks so much for posting the link to Sir Ken's presentation there, fantastic speaker and a very interesting presentation. I've been homeschooled since Grade 7, now finished 'school' and trying to figure out what to do next... it's really neat to see that sort of thinking out there.

David Weiss said...

Thanks Ryan. Homeschooling is a wonderful option, I wish more people could take advantage of it. You might enjoy my parent's blog on homeschooling

David Weiss

Anonymous said...

Hey David,

Thanks for the link, very interesting - my Mom is getting a thrill out of both the TED stuff and the Blog.

Keep up the good work, like I said it's a very interesting read... one of the few things I actually use the Firefox Live Bookmarks for ;-)

Ryan

Anonymous said...

Thanks for pointing me to TED. That's an interesting talk by Sir Ken Robinson. He makes some excellent points, but he's wrong on others: for example, his comment about universities being designed to create more professors seems to be mainly true about European universities, not American ones. And given the manner in which he walks onto the stage, I couldn't help but think about what sort of relationship he has with his own body.

Speaking of TED, have you seen David Pogue's presentation about software design? He has some very useful comments about the design of Micrsoft's software.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link. What a great presentation. I really enjoyed his sense of humor.