Vignettes #36

I've always believed it was a virtue to be knowledgable, or that it's quite desirable to acquire as much knowledge as possible. In everyday life that's not really as approved as one might assume.

My sister, who's younger than me and therefore always picked up some facts I'd tell her, once came home from school all teary-eyed and pouty. I asked her what was wrong, did anything happen? She said: "I'll never believe anything you say again."

She told me that in her biology class the teacher asked the kids what kind of animals lived in Africa. They came up with the usual: lions, monkeys, elephants, crocodiles, etc. - and tigers. The teacher didn't reject that last reply, so my sister raised her hand and said - as she had learned from me: "Tigers don't live in Africa."

The whole class - including the teacher! - laughed at her. I really got angry about this, especially about the teacher. In Germany teachers need a university degree in the subject they were giving, and this one obviously hadn't deserved hers. We talked it over with my parents that we might need to protest at the school.

However, the next day, when my sister came home again from school, she told me that her teacher had admitted that she had looked up the information on her own and that my sister had been right all along. She apologized to her in front of the whole class.

I said it all turned out OK in the end. But my sister said: "No, it is not OK. And I never want you telling me any of that stuff you know about again. I don't want to know such things." And she really never believed anything I said again.