When I was a kid, 10 or so, my mom's youngest brother (who was probably 24, 25 at the time) asked me "What's the capital of South Dakota?"
I said "I don't know, what is it?"
He said "I don't have to know—I'm not in school."
That moment is branded in my brain.
I went and learned it [Pierre, SD] when I got home, and haven't forgotten, though it will NEVER matter to me in any way whatsoever. It's trivia disguised as "knowledge." But the idea that there were things kids needed to know and adults didn't care anything about stayed with me.
Unschoolers see their kids learning all kinds of things joyfully, for fun. I'm definitely NOT opposed to trivia. Trivia means "it won't be on the test." Without tests, everything can be entertaining trivia.
photo by Alex Polikowsky
An additional example came by e-mail:
ReplyDeleteElise wrote:
This reminds me of a story from my time working on a psychiatric ward. The psychiatrist, the head nurse and an aide were giving a "mental status" questionnaire to a new admission. "What year is it? Who is the President? Who is the Governor?" etc. But when we got to "Who is the Mayor," he had no idea who that was. We all looked among ourselves; none of us knew either. This does make me wonder how we can assess mental status or intelligence or any other measure of capacity, among people who are really just not that interested in what we think is important.