Do We Admit ... ?

I'm reading this amazing new novel--Frankenstein in Baghdad--by Ahmed Saadawi (translated from the Arabic), a Frankenstein-like story set in Baghdad after the arrival of the Americans in the Iraq War. (More about this book in this space on Sunday--in "Sunday Sundries.")

This morning, I read this comment that one of the main characters, a journalist, writes in a magazine:

"People are deluded and never admit their ignorance" (130).

It can be hard, can't it? Admitting that you may not know what you're talking about? We don't hear or see such admissions all that often. The Talking Heads on TV rarely (ever?) say something like this: "I don't know what I'm talking about." No, instead they blather on ... and on ... and on ... feigning knowledge, offering firm opinions based on that most fragile of foundations: ignorance.

I had a teacher in high school who didn't like to admit she'd made a mistake. A math teacher. She would say--when someone caught her in a mistake (it was never I who caught her!)--"I was just trying to see if you were paying attention."

Yeah, right.

Early in my own teaching career, I did much the same thing, fearing that if I admitted I didn't know something, then the kids would lose respect for me.

Actually, quite the opposite is true: Kids lose respect for you if they realize you're faking it--and kids are very adept at smelling the rot of fakery.

So, later in my career, I had less and less trouble saying, "I don't know--does anyone here know? How can we find out?" (That last question, as smart phones arrived, became unnecessary!)

The most intelligent people I've ever known are not those who knew everything (there are no such critters) but those who readily admitted their ignorance, who knew where to find the answers, who were unafraid and even eager to learn from others.

And these qualities, I fear, are rapidly vanishing from today's public discourse. These days so many of us seem determined to Stand Firm, even on shaky ground--on very shaky ground. We think our asking questions is an admission of stupidity. (No, ignorance and stupidity are not the same thing: ignorance is not knowing something; stupidity is the inability--or, nowadays, the unwillingness, to learn.) We are terrified of telling others that they are right, that we are wrong. We fear our entire house of cards will collapse if one turns out to be the Joker.

Actually, I'm being a little disingenuous by using we here. Because, you see, I like finding out when I'm mistaken. I don't want to walk around, my brain a bag full of error and half-truth and bias. Nothing good can come of that.

So, maybe we should all lighten up a little--or "unlax," as Bugs Bunny would say. We really can learn from one another--but first we have to have the courage to admit that we need to learn from one another.