A Lover of Learning
Mar. 25th, 2017 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndrosenI stayed at work late on Friday, and when I went to the King Street Metro station, it was closed. There were to be shuttle buses, but not then and there, and buses through traffic are slower than Metro trains, so I splurged on a taxi. The driver, as it happened, recognized me from several months before, and we got to talking. He thought I had a British accent, which I denied; however, he noted that I speak grammatically, which the British do. I pointed out that an educated American can also speak grammatically, and that he might have a skewed sample of British, since British visitors he had driven would be disproportionately well-to-do and educated, not semiliterate chavs.
He asked where I was from, so I told him that I had grown up mostly in State College, Pennsylvania, where my father had been a Professor of Philosophy. He asked about ancient Greek philosophers; he had heard of Aristotle, and wanted to know who had drunk poison, and why. I told him about how Socrates had been tried and condemned to drink hemlock, and how Plato, the student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, had written the Platonic dialogues, and taught future generations about Socrates. I mentioned that a friend of mine, as a child and teenager, had read these dialogues and wanted to join the conversation; they're not something you can't access without a college education and a professor to explain everything.
The taxi driver was not very well educated; he was bright and curious. He asked me, for example, whether Socrates had lived a thousand years ago, and I answered that it had been more than twenty-four hundred years ago. He asked whether Socrates had gone to a university, and I told him no; universities had been founded centuries later, in the Middle Ages, to teach the thought of Aristotle and other thinkers.
And so it went; he had questions about universities, and which was the oldest (I didn't know), and about the months I had spent in England at the age of eight, while my father taught at Cambridge for a term. Here was a man, born in India and having grown up in Pakistan, who didn't have my advantages or knowledge, but who was bright and eager to learn. I hope he gets the opportunity to read books and learn more about the subjects that interest him.
He asked where I was from, so I told him that I had grown up mostly in State College, Pennsylvania, where my father had been a Professor of Philosophy. He asked about ancient Greek philosophers; he had heard of Aristotle, and wanted to know who had drunk poison, and why. I told him about how Socrates had been tried and condemned to drink hemlock, and how Plato, the student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, had written the Platonic dialogues, and taught future generations about Socrates. I mentioned that a friend of mine, as a child and teenager, had read these dialogues and wanted to join the conversation; they're not something you can't access without a college education and a professor to explain everything.
The taxi driver was not very well educated; he was bright and curious. He asked me, for example, whether Socrates had lived a thousand years ago, and I answered that it had been more than twenty-four hundred years ago. He asked whether Socrates had gone to a university, and I told him no; universities had been founded centuries later, in the Middle Ages, to teach the thought of Aristotle and other thinkers.
And so it went; he had questions about universities, and which was the oldest (I didn't know), and about the months I had spent in England at the age of eight, while my father taught at Cambridge for a term. Here was a man, born in India and having grown up in Pakistan, who didn't have my advantages or knowledge, but who was bright and eager to learn. I hope he gets the opportunity to read books and learn more about the subjects that interest him.
