Nangle Natters: A little bit of knowledge

A canon of knowledge is an interesting thing. I liked that advert for a particular cable company that came on the TV in November. It proclaimed that a group of children held the power, because they knew how to programme the digiboxes, how to find the box sets, and that last episode you’d recorded but didn’t know where it had been saved. And this is their canon of knowledge.

Equally, I have been spending time with a septuagenarian friend who is frequently blown away by the amount of facts I just don’t know. Things that were a stalwart of his own education – like British history, basic British geography, and words that go in one of my ears and out the other with alarming speed all bowl him over at my ignorance. And yet, at the same time I am frequently baggsied to join quiz teams – so I must be doing something right.

I have only the vaguest of ideas where Manchester is on a map

Trends in education ebb and flow. I went to a school that focussed on the arts and learning by questioning rather than by rote. Subsequently, I buy most of the things I need when popping over The Channel with my 25-year-old GCSE French, and am happy to have a punt at communicating even if my grammar proves a bit dodgy. But I have only the vaguest of ideas where Manchester is on a map of Great Britain.

I think the thing is to keep learning from each other. If I want my nephew, who can crack the security on my iPhone in a heartbeat, to listen to the wisdom I’ve got to impart – I probably ought to listen to the things he’s just learned at school that day too. Chances are, some of what he’s learned will be fresh news to me.

I surprised my older friend the other day by commenting that an idea we had been discussing was ‘oxymoronic’. Here was a glimpse of where our educations intersected, learning words that are a bit fascinating with their many syllables and contrastingly simple meanings. (Definition – oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two opposite ideas are joined to create an effect. The common oxymoron phrase is a combination of an adjective proceeded by a noun with contrasting meanings, e.g. “cruel kindness” or “living death”.) Suddenly our knowledge was in sync. Which was nice. And then we were back to learning from each other. Which was also a bit wondrous.