July 31, 2003 - Interest-Questions

While walking my dog yesterday, I found another page, apparently from the same encyclopedia that someone decided to destroy. It was near the same bus stop where I found the other two pages.

This page is entitled "HERE AND THERE IN THIS VOLUME." Either "Here and There" is the name of the encyclopedia or they were trying to be cute.

Underneath this, it says, "Interest-Questions Answered in This Volume." I don't know why they used a hyphen in "Interest-Questions." I can only assume they expect these questions to be so inherently interesting that the adjective deserves a closer connection to the noun than normal.

The questions are actually quite interesting, and taken out of context, without the rest of the volume, they become a sort of prose poem. Here are some of my favorites:

How do animals become extinct? 423.
What is the coldest temperature ever recorded on earth? 440.
What ancient mathematician said, "Don't disturb my circles," when Roman soldiers were about to kill him? 488.
What insects keep slaves? 436-7.
Why does the "doodlebug" dig holes in the sand? 451.
What are the ants' cows? 454.
Is man the only animal that possess a thumb? 452 picture.
What is the lowest form of animal life? 370.
Do you think that Americans were right when they called Alaska "Seward's folly"? 232.
Are bathrooms really modern conveniences? 44.
Where can you dip fresh water from the Atlantic Ocean? 293.
Why was a citizen of the United States fined $100 in 1872 for trying to vote? 444.
What president of the United States was the son of another president? 20.
Where is the "roof of the world"? 616.
What is the "Christ of the Andes"? 474 picture.
What two emperors agreed in 1807 to divide the world between them? 255.
Why are monkeys and apes the most popular animals in the zoo? 452.
What are some requirements for airline stewardesses? 187.
What mineral can be woven into cloth? 613.
What keeps an arch from falling? 477.
How did Scheherazade outwit the sultan? 472.
Why are Romanesque churches dark? 495-6.
How did a flyswatter change the history of Algeria? 274.
What is the "philosopher's stone"? 252.
How long is a newly hatched alligator? 279.
What is a magic square? 529.
What goddess dressed her son as a girl to keep him from fighting in the Trojan War? 10.
How is alcohol denatured? 254.
What is the difference between a plant and an animal? 400.
Give two reasons why alfalfa is a desirable crop. 259.
What is a trundle bed? 328 picture.
Which character in "Little Women" represents the author? 254.
Which animals live the longest? 414 pictograph.

(View the entire list here.)

Aside from the fact that some of these questions are more philosophical than factual, these questions fascinate me because they represent a particular attitude towards science and history that thrived in the 1950s and 1960s, which is the approximate time period for this encyclopedia, by an educated guess. (None of the questions mention computers.)

In the middle of the Space Race, with the promised technological utopia of the future apparently growing closer every day, there was a sort of reverence towards science, a belief in it as a panacea for all of our problems. And so the simultaneous breathless wonder and smirking confidence behind these questions.

Similarly, history was viewed (and taught) with the confidence of a western superpower at the height of its dominance. The coming decades would bring with them not only technological marvels but also the globalization of the economy, limiting American influence (except for those heading major corporations). The coming decades would also bring with them the assassination of a popular president (JFK), the debacle of Vietnam (50,000 U.S. troops killed with no declared victory), the Watergate scandal (forever altering Americans' view of their president), terrorism, the two Gulf wars and growing suspicions that corporate interests possess a strangle hold on the government.

These questions remind me of my own school days, for just this sort of rote learning -- from the privileged perspective of white, middle class America -- was fed to us for test after test. Life seemed so much easier when we knew it was just a matter of memorizing the right answers to pointlessly trivial questions. But as far as actual learning, I'd have done just as well studying "Trivial Pursuit" cards.

In college, I remember the baffled frustration I felt when I took my first humanities class, on classics of western literature. After we read each book, the professor would open a class discussion. He filled us in on sociological context, gave us some information about the specific work but mostly let us run amok, offering our opinions about what the book could have meant, arguing about interpretations, with no "authoritative" view given.

My pen, so accustomed to writing down "facts" for later regurgitation, paused and my mind worked frantically, desperately, to figure out this new teaching style.

"How's he going to test us on this?" I wondered.

But soon I felt comfortable in these new classes, and I felt invigorated as I never had in a classroom. If my mind were a sponge, it was one of those tiny encapsulated sponges that turn into something miraculous when you drop them in water. This class was the water. My sponge mind bloomed.

I wonder once more why someone chose to destroy this encyclopedia. Certainly, they must have realized that it was hopelessly out of date and there was no point in even trying to sell it at a yard sale.

But the fact that they not only disposed of the encyclopedia, but apparently tore it apart with such reckless glee that the pages are still floating around my neighborhood, this makes me think they were attacking more than this one book. Perhaps, adult or child, they were lashing out at smug authority figures and the demoralizing trivial pursuit of American grade school education. Perhaps they were fighting back at the status quo imposed by school uniforms and standardized tests, or at the flawed American middle class dream, or at all the "truths" pushed at them that turned out not to be true.

Perhaps, this gesture was their way of saying, "There are no easy answers." And yet, it seems, they wanted to believe that there are answers out there, somewhere. And so at the end of their destruction, they loosed some of the pages into the wind, watched them float away down the street. As if to say, there are answers out there; we just have to work to find them.