Is there a difference between 'Knowledge' and 'Wisdom'? (1)

When I was growing up, there was a healthy tension between those in my family who had not been to school and those of us who had been lucky enough to be educated.

This tension was expressed most often by those members of our family – particularly, the men – whom we regarded as ''illiterates”.

They'd never received a Western education, so we openly treated them with scant respect, especially when it came to seeking opinions about anything important in life. Their attitudes were completely different from ours, and we largely put them on the back-burner.

They noticed the haughtiness that marked our relationship with them. To get their own back, they never ceased to “test” our so-called “intelligence” we had acquired by going to school, to see whether our “education” had indeed provided us with any knowledge that was of real relevance to the lives we led.

They sought reassurance that they weren't as "useless" as their inability to read or write, or speak English (the language imposed upon us by our British rulers of the time) made them out to be. Yes, they might have admired us for being able to save them from going to pay money to a professional ”Letter-Writer” when they needed to send a message to someone in another town or village. But they didn't do that so often, for when they needed to talk to someone who lived elsewhere away from them, they travelled to go and see the person.

This enabled them to collect stories about their travels to tell other members of the family, as well as their friends – something they valued, as the thrill of travelling lessened the boredom of normal life.

Travelling also offered them an opportunity to renew physical contact with people they had interacted with, intimately, in earlier days. Such re-established contacts were emotionally satisfying to them and they welcomed them in their lives.

Letters – or even worse, frightening telegrams sent to announce the occurrence of deaths and other emergencies in their family – were a nuisance that to be endured only when necessary. They weren't anything to be craved- as those who went to school seemed to do, what with their pre-occupation with the yearly “'examinations” by which their proficiency in acquiring the art of reading and writing were measured to assess whether they should proceed further in “education”.

The “illiterate” watched the devastation that occurred in the lives of school children who failed their examinations with incomprehension. This so-called “disaster” was alien to life as it was lived. Didn't these school-children lead their own lives before they went to school to be subjected to these examinations? If they failed, so what? All they would need to do would be to revert to the life they knew before they went to school, wasn't it? So why allow failure at examinations to ruin their lives? Some fellows who failed felt so disgraced that they even moved away from their own villages to live elsewhere!

These extreme reactions to failure at school exams seemed ridiculous to the “illiterates”, for although they too experienced “peer pressure”, such pressure concerned things that really mattered greatly in real in life. such as being rejected for marriage by a girl one loved, or being unable to build a house or create a farm that could take care of one's family; or being incapable of resisting the youthful tendency to become addicted to alcohol. – these were the real “tests” of character that, to them, determined a person's status in adult life.

Written examinations? But, well – it was the white man's prescription for advancement in life and society that mattered these days, weren't they? The “illiterate” accepted the new facts of life. But they looked on it all from a practical point of view: if your child in school ”failed” an examination, you would have to cough up money to buy him or her a new school uniform and new books to enable him/her to repeat the class (where this was permitted).

In many instances, a child who failed an examination was driven away from school – either by an unwillingness to suffer the humiliation of attending classes with his/her former juniors or by the inability of his/her parents to raise the funds needed to allow an unpromising school career to continue.

In my family, my elder half-brother, Kwasi Kwakye, was the pioneer: the first to go to school. He was already in Standard Three (Primary Class Six) when another senior brother, Kwame Awuku, and I was enrolled into Class One. Kwakye's being in Standard Three was something of a boon to us: we were spared most of the bullying that Standard Three boys carried out against those in junior classes. For if someone bullied you and you told your brother, he too would go and bully someone related to the one who bullied you. Which created a sort of balance – in our favour.

I was very eager to learn as much as possible before I formally went to school, and so I became the “fag” of my brother Kwakye so that he would teach me at home, not only how to read and write, but a lot more of the things he learnt at school. What do I mean by becoming his “fag”? Well, for instance, he loved to go hunting for birds in the bush with his tae (catapult), and he would make sure I always tagged along, to collect for him, the pebbles for him, which he used as the “bullets”' in his catapult. And I became his “retriever” who undertook the dangerous job of finding the birds he was able to shoot down, from the snake-infested thickets into which the birds fell. I also acted as the confidante – or “betweener” – who relayed messages between him and his girlfriends.

In return, I was allowed to hijack his textbooks and school notebooks and teach myself a lot from them. Once, this caused me trouble: I showed off to one of his classmates by repeating to him, something I had picked up from Kwakye's notebook! The guy was angry that I knew as much as him though I was only in Class One, and he threatened to report Kwakye to their class teacher. I don't know whether the teacher had asked them to keep what they learnt from him a secret, but the fuss nearly made me lose the privilege of being able to raid my brother's school bag at will.

Thenceforth he tried to hide things from me, My only salvation was that I was indispensable to him, as he still needed me to fetch ”bullets” – and his paramours – for him! He did warn me, though, to be careful in future not to show off my knowledge before!

Anyway, by filching stuff from my brother in the way I have described, and also by borrowing books from whichever senior pupil I could – I was able to convey to my teacher, on being enrolled in Class One, the idea that he had very little to teach me. My teacher, Mr Akwa, was in fact so impressed with my so-called precocity; that once after I had obtained ten-out-of-ten in a test and the next best pupil, a boy called Kwaku Hene, had only obtained eight- out- of ten, Mr Akwa put me on a desk all by myself and wrote underneath the table of the desk: “DANGER D D BOY!”

Mr Akwa then went to Standard Three – which was being taught by a college mate of his called Mr Ayeh – and invited the pupils (whom we feared very much, as they were our Seniors of Seniors who could punish us for being late and things like that). Mr Akwa enticed these ”gods” of ours to come and have “a look” at me!

But I soon discovered that there was a price to pay for this fame. For Mr Akwa began to palm off to me, the really difficult (that is, dense) members of my class who were not receptive to the knowledge he wanted to impart to them. He would give me exercises and ask me to take these pupils through them – under the shade of a tree just out of earshot of our classroom proper – while he moved ahead with the brighter pupils himself.

I never got to know whether Mt Akwa made sure there were gaps in my own knowledge, as a result of my missing lessons from him. What I do know us that I continued to top the class whenever he gave us a “test”, despite spending so much time under the tree, teaching the “dullards” for him!

A funny incident happened while I was carrying out these teaching duties of mine. One day, we were going on as usual under our tree when a well-known bully from Class Two came to disrupt the class. Now, Class Two children were known to be obnoxious, for although they were only one year above us Class One pupils, they somehow regarded us as the pits, having inherited from them, the status of ”bottom class” they had just vacated.

But this bully is especially arrogant even for a Class Two pupil.

“Hey?” he shouted at my charges, “ Are you fools or what? How can you allow this tiny tot to be your teacher? Haven't you paid school fees like everyone else? Imbeciles!! Idiots!”

My classmates did not take kindly to this disruption and informed him that it was our teacher himself who had selected me to come and teach them under the tree. Could he please leave us alone? They pleaded.

But he didn't leave and continued to stand his ground, hurling abuse at my charges. He made further learning impossible, and I started to walk towards our classroom to go and report him to our teacher.

But that proved necessary, for unfortunately for the bully, some of the “difficult” classmates over whom I had been put in charge were boys who had already sprouted pubic hairs, and were revered by the majority of Class One children (who were mainly little kids aged between six and eight). One of these mature pupils was a powerfully-built guy called Gasimon. He had the temper of a bulldog.

Without saying a word, Gasimon went straight to the bully and let him have a very good one on the cheek – gboom! We all clapped and laughed.

The bully's cheek swelled to twice its size within a few seconds! We wondered whether he would go and report Gasimon to the head-teacher. But instead, the bully slunk away home, crying all the way.

Even though he was in pain, he had had enough sense not to go back to his classroom, or anywhere else in the school. For that matter, as he would have had to undergo the embarrassing task of explaining just how he'd come by his swollen cheek, even though he hadn't shown any sign, earlier in the morning, that he was suffering from mumps! The episode was one of the funniest – and most satisfying – events in my days as a supernumerary Class One teacher.

(To be continued)