You can't tweet an educated mind

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday May 7, 2015

Talking with an 18 year old I noted she had a Russian surname, and yes, her father's family came from Russian stock. "You must get the video of Dr Zhivago". Her look showed she had no idea what I was talking about. I explained the movie - Omar Sharif and Julie Christie meant nothing, either - and then gently probed whether she had read any of the great Russian literature.

She'd heard of War and Peace, though not read it, and vaguely recalled her father talking about Crime and Punishment. Her English literature was not a lot stronger, but she is an intelligent, educated girl. And much like so many of her age, has huge gaps in her general knowledge. So what has gone wrong?

Between the ages of 13 and 20 is a time when knowledge should have a huge expansion. There are all the school and exam topics of course, but also the child's self-discovery.

These are the years to discover Russian literature or fall in love with Bathsheba Everdene from Thomas Hardy's Far from the madding crowd. For the girls there are the romantics and rotters of Jane Austen and, currently, the scheming courtiers of Hilary Mantel.

For some it may be the awakening to the magic of numbers and mathematics, for others, discovering great artists nobody ever told you about before. Maybe it's pulling cars apart and rebuilding them, or getting to understand what makes a great cook, or discovering what's so special about Beethoven and Bach.

But can all this happen in the midst of a hundred tweets and Facebook postings a day? Is education now in two-minute grabs on YouTube? Or do we have any more need for general knowledge with Google constantly at our fingertips?

Kim Williams, former News Limited CEO, warns media that don't respond to the "on demand audience" of the digital age will not survive. None is more aware of that than those of us still working with ink on paper.

But to claim to have a rounded education, you need the knowledge to join the dots that come on demand. Otherwise the world is a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing.

Where does William the Conqueror join Magna Carta, join Parliament House Canberra? A thousand years separate the events, yet they are one history. How did the Boer War create the most monstrous event of World War II? How quickly can you multiply seven times eight (without a calculator)? How did David Copperfield affect insolvency laws (not the magician, either)?

A mind fed on ample general knowledge, a curious enquiring mind, will skip and hop to connect the facts quickly from the pool it carries. Too often the Google search can be tedious and confusing - unless you understand the context, facts alone won't format themselves.

Do occasionally point your kids or even employees, to "good books". Talk about them, get them to see a time when kids asked "why", not "wii". As for you - well War and Peace is nowhere near as daunting as people like to pretend. Read it on Kindle and it won't even bend your wrist.

In case you missed one, the answers are 1 The British Constitution; 2 the British invented concentration camps to hold Boers; 3 56 (remember your tables?) 4 Mr Micawber landed in debtor's prison, as had Charles Dickens' father, and the exposure of the cruelties of the system, in the book, pressured for change in the way bankruptcy was handled.