By Kelly Foster
“There is fun to be had, there are games to be won.”
—Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go
My favorite year of school was fifth grade. I don’t know if that year simply marked a transition from childhood learning to more independent learning or fifth grade was simply more interesting than the years that came before.
I do know that whenever I think about the bedrock things I’ve learned over the years, they all began in fifth grade in Becky Thompson’s green room at the end of the hall at Covenant Christian School.
Mrs. Thompson was obsessive about Geography, filling her room with maps she’d made herself of Europe, Asia, Africa, South America. I remember recognizing Italy because it was a boot. And Sicily the rock the boot was kicking.
We read Romeo and Juliet, and I fell in love with Shakespeare. We read about the Civil War and the Protestant Reformation and the Sumerians, and I fell in love with history. We learned to distinguish a Picasso from a Monet and a Manet from a Renoir, and I fell in love with art. We memorized “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “The Village Blacksmith.” I even enjoyed math and science and grammar in her class. It all seemed so fascinating, and I never remember feeling ashamed of finding it fascinating.
This was not often the case when I moved to another school for junior high and high school. More often than not, any student who rose above mediocrity or used the occasional big word or admitted they found something interesting was either mocked or alienated. You tried to distinguish yourself only quietly, perhaps on paper. You tried not to answer too many questions. You tried to keep your vocabulary simple, your thoughts concrete. That was survival in high school. My best friend and I tied for Most Intellectual in our annual Who’s Who pageant our senior year, and I realized even then it was hardly a compliment.
Lately, I’ve been musing on these remembrances because I’m coaching Quiz Bowl at the high school where I now teach, a school that literally bills itself in its ad campaign as: “St. Andrews. Where it’s cool to be smart.”
I must admit, I was a bit cynical when I first heard this. When has being smart ever really been “cool”? But after several months at St. Andrews, I have actually found this mostly to be the case. It’s a warm and fuzzy, accepting kind of place, loaded with smart kids.
Despite that, the kids who participate in Quiz Bowl have to know when they sign up that Quiz Bowl, even at St. Andrews, is sort of the ultimate admission of nerdiness even among the intellectually gifted. It’s a pretty bold move, socially. And I love them for being so brave, so willing to admit that learning is fun, that the world is fascinating.
We go to tournaments at Ivy League universities across the country. A month ago, we went to Princeton. This weekend, we’ll be at Harvard. We’ll hit other schools—Columbia, Brown, Georgetown, University of Chicago. It’s an impressive list, and I’m so proud we qualify consistently to go to these places, particularly considering most people expect Mississippians to be spending their time spitting tobacco on the front porch polishing their shotguns, too busy cowtipping to fool with book-larnin’.
I love being an underdog, and let’s face it, when you’re from Mississippi, you’re sort of a de facto underdog. It’s just the way it is.
For those who don’t know, let me briefly explain Quiz Bowl. It’s sponsored by the National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT). Each round lasts approximately 45 minutes and consists of a series of questions covering Math, Science, English, History, Political Science, Geography, Art, Film, Music, and Popular Culture.
We practice twice a week by going through two packets of questions. Students separate themselves into teams of four and play with our buzzer system. Sort of an intellectual version of “shirts vs. skins.”
When we’re missing a student, I take a buzzer for myself, and the other Coach calls out the questions. I become more competitive than I ever knew myself to be. When a question comes up that I know, I become absolutely giddy with anticipation and find myself shouting the answer.
“Bogdonavich!”
“Ionesco!”
“Thus Spake Zarathustra!!”
“BALZAC!”
All my life, I’ve had an easy time remembering what most people would class as trivia. And often in my life, I’ve felt apologetic for this.
“Yes, I know who won the Oscar in 1968. I’m sorry. I know that’s weird.”
“Yes, I know people in Belgium speak Flemish.”
“Yes, I know Greenland belongs to Denmark.”
Now suddenly again, just like in fifth grade, I don’t have to apologize. My students think it’s awesome that I know random things. They think it makes me (dare I say it?) cool.
As adults, all that information we used to receive so passively when we were teenagers isn’t so readily available to us anymore. I don’t remember how photosynthesis works. I often have to consult Google to locate a country. I have to remind myself what entropy really means or which South American River is the longest. We just don’t learn those things anymore. And then we forget them.
But more than forgetting the facts, we forget how much fun it was to learn them. How simple was the joy of being able to identify Italy the boot, Sicily the rock. Mercutio. Queen Mab. Eugene O’Neill. Lerner and Loewe. Djibouti, Djibouti. Hohenzollern.
Just as language without love is noise, so too is knowledge without love of the thing known.
Quiz Bowl is fun because it reminds me how deeply I love this world I still hunger to know. It reminds me how much I still have yet to know. It reminds me there are miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.
And thank God for that.
Queen of the smarty pants