Owning What You Don't Know.

The other night I was out to dinner with some friends to celebrate a birthday.

I have always been a fan of dinner conversation. I do have to watch myself, though, as I tend to be a talker. Rather than thinking before speaking, my ideas tend to come out all at once, in one big sloppy mess. Thinking then speaking has never been a personal strength. For me, these two skills are not mutually exclusive. They happen all at once and this sometimes leads to me tripping up over my tongue as though it is a root anchored firmly in the ground.

At dinner, aware that it would probably be at my own expense, I decided to discuss one  inadequacy -  my inability to pronounce words correctly - with my friends.

My friends and I started a band in our first year out of University. We were called The Domino Effect, hoping that such a moniker would make fans fall in love with our music. Rather than our music having a “domino effect,” however, our music had “NO effect!”.  That sad situation did not stop our passion! We were made of sterner stuff.

One day, during a practise, we were in the middle of rehearsing a song. This song was called, “Different Similarity,” which I pronounced as “Different Sim-u-larity.” Pronouncing “similarity” like this was not a huge sin and I think I had managed to get through my life saying it incorrectly because people were generally too polite to correct me. Either that or they simply didn’t notice. However, within the context of this particular band practise saying “sim-u-larity,” sounded out of place.

“Did you just say ‘sim-u-larity?’ " inquired Tim, “with a ‘u?’

Oh, the shame, I thought. How can I save face? I felt that my artistic integrity was being questioned because I was mispronouncing words.

“No,” I said. “You must have misheard me, I said in a pale attempt to deflect all blame onto him. Responding to my defensiveness our other bandmate, Yohan, responded, “yeah you did.” He pointed to a lyric sheet saying,“look, he spelt it wrong too!”

The shame I felt! I was sure I had assessed my own pronunciation of the word against my older sister growing up. That is how I measured all of my language. I would listen to her and then imitate words I was unfamiliar with based on the model that she provided. I was sure she always said it the way I just had. How could she mislead me in such a way? After agonising about this for a few moments, I did what any self respecting musician would do in this situation - I blamed her. Not out loud to my friends, of course, but in my head. It was an unforgivable sin on her part, leading the young - and therefore more gullible - astray.

In relaying this story to my friends at dinner, Sophie commented, “and this guy is teaching our children!” Now this comment was meant as a joke but it did get me thinking about the perception out there that the teacher needs to be the bearer of ALL knowledge.  It is funny that,  as a teacher, I constantly feel the need to defend myself in these situations by talking about what education in the 21st Century means or going in depth into modern learning pedagogies, OR by giving the recipient a verbal essay of my personal teaching philosophy. . . Which is essentially what I did.

If I learned one thing from this, it was this: We must OWN what we do not know. For us to learn, we must not be afraid of what we don’t know, regardless of how simple the information is perceived to be. Saying ‘I don’t know’ can be very empowering for the individual who utters those words. Firstly, it gives that person the opportunity to learn. Secondly, you begin to realise that other people do not care if you don’t know and by simply admitting it you create an opportunity to learn through discussion and explanation. Finally, in the words of . . . (if anyone can find an appropriate quote to go here, by all means, please let me know)