Roots of Knowledge

The thought process behind this blog came from reading a book yesterday that discussed constructivist pedagogy in an asynchronous class and thinking through the importance of social location in relation to an article that I just finished editing with a colleague. The book had me thinking about where the roots of my knowledge come from, and what the most formative learning experiences were for me growing up. I reflected on where I went for information when I needed it in elementary and high school and this led me to having to call my mother to ask her something.

I grew up in a town that was pretty francophone and when I was in grade 5-9 the public library had about one shelf of English books. English books were not things you could readily purchase in town either and they would be treats that you brought back from trips to small Ontario border towns (shout out New Liskeard) that had a Coles. Every once in a while the Scholastic flyer would come where you could buy English books cheaply, but they were never books filled with knowledge. They were Garfield comics and the occasional “how to study effectively” handbook (you can probably guess where I spent my $5). This is of course before the Internet.

Our school library was also pretty slim and the only book I remember taking out there over and over again was Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (seriously if anyone from Noranda School is reading this check out the card in the back of that book, it probably has my name a half dozen times). This is why when folk tell me about these deep connections to books they read as I child I have trouble imagining this because I didn’t read any of those “children’s books.” I don’t know anything about Charlotte and her web, Charlie and his chocolate, lions, witches, wardrobes, or large fruit consumed by James in secret gardens. The only “children’s book” I ever read was Heidi and that was a birthday gift from a classmate in grade 8 who had family who went to Montréal a fair bit. My elementary/high school (same building different floors, yes that kind of a small place) was not necessarily pedagogically rigorous, but I excelled throughout my time there because I was always craving knowledge. So where did I learn the things that I knew? This is what I was thinking of yesterday. And then I remembered the encyclopedias.

We had a picture encyclopedia set. We were not necessarily the kind of family to have an encyclopedia yet I never once in my 4 plus decades of life really questioned where that encyclopedia set came from, until yesterday. So I called my mom because I knew that the encyclopedias would still be in the basement exactly where I left them when I last used them almost 30 years ago. I asked my mom where they came from and if she could see if there was a copyright on them. She wasn’t sure where they came from exactly but she assumed they were from my grandmother (her mom) who somehow acquired them. The copyright on the encyclopedia, 1958.  If you want to see what the encyclopedias look like (at least the covers) then you can go to this link. 

These books were where I found most of my knowledge and I now wonder how accurate all of that was. Report on different types of trees, look in the encyclopedia, background on Marie Curie, look in the encyclopedia. I never went to the kind of high school that taught you proper citation, so I never realized that all of the information I was reading was something like 30 years old. On searching further with my mom on FaceTime we figured out that these were books that were available through some sort of couponing system at the Dominion grocery store and that gramma had somehow acquired all of them. This incredibly dated set of grocery store encyclopedias are the roots of my knowledge. When I think about doing research while still in elementary/ high school the image in my mind is me in the basement sitting on the crappy utility carpet so that I wouldn’t be on the concrete writing things down on lined loose leaf from one of the encyclopedias. Why I wouldn’t bring the book upstairs and why the encyclopedias had to stay in the basement is probably something for therapy (cough cough problematic household lack of value of education) but it’s interesting just how much those encyclopedias factor in my formative schooling and homework as reference touchstone. 

So this week’s question is: do you have a similar book or set of books that you feel became the roots of your knowledge? I’d be curious to hear if any of you had 30 year old dated encyclopedias from grocery store coupons.