WHAT DO YOU KNOW...?

Because of the restrictions from the unnecessary pandemic, I was able to catch up with my crossword puzzles. 

Besides my Page-a-Day calendar of ten-minute "MENSA" crossword puzzles, I also do the weekly puzzle from The Week magazine, and the Union Leader Sunday puzzle, but along the way, the Union Leader daily puzzles piled up. The Ever-lovely Miss Kim clipped them out for me resulting in an at-least solid two-inch pile of undone puzzles all clipped together. Over the past couple of months, I ended up doing several a day and am now caught up! I also found an old puzzle book from several years ago, which led to the idea for this entry.

There is a lot to be learned from doing crosswords. How many of you know Nick and Nora Charles's dog's name? Forgetting the dog, how many of you have even heard of Nick and Nora Charles? How about what Agra is famous for? What about an oboe (that one should be easy)? etc. Doing a puzzle is like watching Jeopardy - I am sometimes amazed at how much I know... and how much I don't know!

If you are still with me, this points to the BIG Life question: when school is through, what should a graduate know and when should s/he know it? I think that question has been asked every year as long as I taught (and never successfully answered). If you have never heard of the Charles family, aside from crosswords, does it even matter? If you don't know where the Taj Mahal is, does it even matter? What if one never read "Romeo and Juliet" or "The Scarlet Letter?" The answer resides in Cultural Literacy, but that is a topic for another time.

I used to say that you don't need to know all the answers, but you need to know how and where to find them. Even that's not easy sometimes. One of the biggest concepts promoted by my school's exceptionally erudite librarian is to not only check facts but check the site that presents those facts. Since anyone can put anything on the Internet, how do we know which are reliable and which not?

Anyone can pretend to be stupid, but not everyone can pretend to be smart. Smart can recognize stupid, but stupid can't always recognize smart. Stupid can't even recognize stupid... and that's a good place to stop.