What Children Want to Know

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

IT is usual for teachers to propound questions, and for children to answer them, and there is no doubt about which is the easier task of the two. To reverse matters, and also, if possible, to find out what is passing in the thoughts of my children, I yesterday confronted them with this demand : “ Suppose this morning an allwise man were to enter our classroom, one who could and would answer any question you chose to put to him, what six things would you ask ? ”

The children were common, ordinary, every-day boys and girls, between the ages of nine and fourteen, — but the questions they put to that imaginary shape from the All-Wise shades were not commonplace. They surprised me not a little, and have set me thinking. Perhaps they will interest others.

The first set of questions was from a boy of eleven, a little button-nosed, redheaded chap, and they were all of a geographical strain : “ Who made the oceans salty ? Why is it that the sun only goes halfway round the earth ? Why is it that we don’t slip off the earth ? If the earth stopped what would happen to us ? How big is a volcano inside ? What is the quietest spot in Europe ? ”

The next six were a girl’s, and all of them purely personal in their nature, her motto evidently being, “ Know thou thyself.”— “Who is my future husband? When am I going to die ? Where is the thief that stole my watch ? Please can you tell me how to draw well ? What position or situation will I have when I get older ? How could I be healthy all my life ? ”

A quiet little girlie of ten, who walks gently in and out of her classroom every day, and looks demure and purely receptive, produces from the quiet depths of somewhere these six posers : “ Who was the first school-teacher ? Why are not all the people in the world the same color ? Why are boys and girls not the same ? Why is it that oil will not mix with water ? How many feet of snow are there in the Rocky Mountains ? Please can you tell me all about history ? ”

A remarkable series is that of a blackeyed little Jewess, a bright wee maid as sharp as a needle : “ How many jewels has Queen Alexandra? Will I be rich or poor ? Who were the first people who lived in Jerusalem ? How is it that the more people get the more they want? Is it true that there is gold and diamonds on Cocos Island ? When the world comes to an end, how can the people be united if parts of their bodies are in different parts of the world ? ”

A young cynic with but half-veiled irony demands (it is a boy this time) : “ Who was the man that invented grammar ? Who was Your school-teacher when You was at school ? Who first thought it was wise to have schools ? What good does history do us ? Did you ever count the stars, — you think you know everything ? What does ignorance personified mean ? ”

Many go back to first principles with mild little queries like these : Why did Adam die ? How old is North America? What was here before the world was made? What language did Adam and Eve speak when they first entered the world? Who married Cain? Where was the Lord before He made the world ? Where was God born ? Are we descendants of the ape ? When we hear about Christ, He lived at the beginning of the first century; was that his first time on this earth ? If Jesus was born on the 25th of December, why did they not begin to count time then instead of at the first of January ? What would there be if there was no universe ? When and how was God the Father created? What holds this world up ? What were Adam and Eve, — English, French, or what? Is it true that we were once monkeys ? How are we to connect what the Bible says of the beginning of the earth with what science says ? What comes after space ? ” These are the problems which occupy our children’s minds when they obediently are doing “ simple interest ” for us, or “ long division,” or pointing out the boundaries of Europe,

But there are worse to follow : “ Why is a wise man better than an inventor ? Where do people go when the Maelstrom takes them down ? How far does a bird fly without stopping ? Please can you tell me, if all the people on the earth were dead, what would happen ? Who made the Sphinx, and when, and how ? When will the Lord come again ? Why should a girl have more sleep than a boy ? Is Charley Ross, the boy that was kidnapped long ago, living, and where ? I would like to know when and how the Russian nation came to be so. Why do large fish eat little ones ? What was the first show in the Coliseum ? How many births occurred on Wednesday last in Canada ? Will perpetual motion ever be discovered ? In Christ’s time were the people who lived to be hundreds of years old, 100 years a baby, or 100 years an old man ? Will the American republic ever become a limited monarchy ? When will there be no saloons or barrooms ? When will there be no more war ? What do men see in tobacco ? How do earrings make people’s eyes sharper? Is it true that when we die, we will come back as a cat or dog ? ” etc.

The rapid transition of thought strikes one on reading the question slips. For instance, were two things more widely apart than these ever before brought into juxtaposition: “If you jumped off the world, and went straight on, where would you go to ? Who killed Julius Cæsar ? ” Or take this pair : “ Why did Joseph not tell his brethren he was their brother the first time they came down to Egypt to buy corn ? What is the power of one of the suckers of a devil-fish ? ” Or this : “ When will the Doukhobors go home to be sensible and eat proper food ? Why has the elephant got a trunk ? ”

The purely ethical questions are, some of them, very good : “ Why are there so many religious sects and denominations, as there is only one way, all taken into consideration, to serve God ? I would like you to tell me why men equally brave are some despised and some honored under the same conditions and by the same country. Is it right to rescue from drowning a man who is your enemy and a scourge to his neighbors ? When people have great troubles in this world, why do they not end these troubles ? Why do some people fancy themselves above others, when they all have to die some day, and as we are told when Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead we will all be equal, none above any of the others, — and some men are great, but the paths of glory lead but to the grave ? If we live again in this world will we be better, and will we be able to have the accomplishments we have in our present life, to a greater extent ? Can or will we be able to send messages to each other through our thoughts ? How ? People say it is wrong to drink wine. Why then did Jesus turn water into wine ? When a man murders another man and then a man hangs the murderer, is the hangman not a murderer himself ? Do you think the world will ever become one nation with the same religion ? Why should the King and Queen be more powerful and be treated better than any other person ? Why should a man be hung if he shot another man, and in war, if they shoot a man, they would be praised and thought much of? Is it wrong to tell stories in defense of others ? Is it wrong to suspect ? If so, how are we to know what to guard against ? Will people who have had no chance of hearing about God be admitted to Heaven ? What is the noblest life ? ” These, surely, all of them, are thoughtful questions; these young people are doing their own thinking.

With a few of what even to Swiveller would be “ staggerers ” we close the list. Here they are: “ Do you know how people hypnotize each other ? Was Shakespeare the same as other men in his age as regards to morals ? Who wrote the first poem ? Who is the prettiest person in the world ? Will you please tell me all about the people in this world ? Where did Mozart, Schubert and the other old musicians learn so much in the first place ? Why do people get sick? Will women ever be considered as equal to men in politics and in business ? What makes some people so clever and others so stupid ? Why did Noah take some animals into the ark and leave others to get drowned ? Will there ever again be as clever a writer as Shakespeare ? Why do men smoke tobacco ? Was Hamlet after his father’s death sane or insane ? Why do people think differently and after about an hour’s argument think the same as they did before ? How is it that animals don’t become civilized ? Will there come a time when the castes in India join ? Why is there such a thing as polotics ? What are people’s brains like ? What kind of a bird was it that first lit in Canada? How many hairs are there in a man’s head ? Why can’t the owl see in the daytime ? Why don’t people look the same ? What does the teacher make us ask these questions for ? Why can’t I always do my lessons right? What makes me lose my temper so much ? Why are some people more sensible than others ? ”

It is a boy who writes: I would like to know how you could tell motherpigeons from father-pigeons,” and “ Who invented the first joke ? ” — while the youngest girl in the whole class wrote in a wee little hand in the middle of a sheet of foolscap, “ Please would you tell me what my mother thinks every day in her mind ? ”