I don't watch a lot of television. In fact, since moving from the back of beyond (where the cable was free with the flat), I've watched almost none. But every fall, I will make the effort to find a very nice YouTube pirate and splurge on Quite Interesting (aka QI).
QI is the best television show you've never heard of. It is a BBC production that I fear will never be imported or adapted for the US. Why? Because its style of humor is too blue and its content is too intelligent. But QI, according to its creator John Lloyd, is more than just a television show, it is a way of looking at the world.
The whole world is interesting if you look at it in the right way. There is no such thing as a boring subject, if approached from the proper direction. On the surface this is just a rehashing of that 1980's phenomena, Trivial Pursuit, but it goes much deeper than that. The QI philosophy is about connections in knowledge, not just the knowledge itself.
Why can't school be like this? Instead of finding the main idea of the passage on ancient Egypt, why can't we teach about the ancient Egyptians? Why are we forced to teach the writing process instead of how to actually write or where the words came from in the first place?
The world is an amazing, fascinating place. Why can't we teach that to children? Where did we go so horribly wrong?
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