On Learning and Levity

Proposing A New Criterion and Kicking Five Year Olds Out of The Classroom

The saying went out that if you cannot teach it to a five-year-old, you do not know it. But without knowing who let it out, and without knowing what to replace it with, I stood opposed to it. It doesn't especially help that it was at one time attributed to Feynman and another time attributed to Einstein. Thus, not having such clear attribution and being false as well, it was one of those sayings that got flung from an unknown void to take its place among us. Shall we retire it if you wish? I might have something better. Something true, clear, and without any doubt, with concrete attribution — me.

Here I propose that instead of waiting to explain what cannot be explained to five-year-olds before we know we know something, let us take for ourselves the test that we don't know anything which we cannot carve a joke out of.

Mr. Einstein laughing with 5-year olds

By this I mean, that, you don't know Euclid if you cannot make an original Euclid joke. You have much learning to do on the Trinity if you cannot make a Trinitarian joke —or at least a joke mocking Arianism. Better yet, there are no good social science jokes; except the ones mocking social sciences. So let's not even bother five-year-olds with that. A man ought not to be awarded a full doctorate unless he can bake a good joke out of his dissertation. Your doctor doesn't make a good medical joke? Be afraid for your life.

And the reason is clear why this must be so: to be funny is to be human. A funny man is a living one. A good laugh is the quickest and easiest act of rational judgment a man executes in his lifetime. Therefore, to give people something to laugh about from an area of expertise is to give people raw material for, and invite their rational status to, a quick game of judgment.

For the secret ingredient of humour is surprise. The mind delights in incongruity. Therefore, to take what appears to be a serious subject and fling it around to produce moments of surprise is to do genius work. In fact, it can only be genius work.

Let us not be carried away by the guy with a scowl so hard, and a tongue so fast when dishing out knowledge —as if he is rushing to the loo— as the genius. The genius is he, who knowing his subject very intimately, knows its tickle points. The genius is the man who knows how to make his subject perform a funny deed and thus to make us the observers laugh.

“Seriousness is not a virtue,” that giant Prince of Paradox once said. “It would be a heresy,” he continues, “but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.”

Owing to this, I propose that every thesis, dissertation, lecture, and presentation ought to contain an elite joke. The joke, being elite, should be the sole conferment of eliteness on the scholar. This is not to say he will not be a scholar. But that he will not be considered an elite scholar. He is just scholar enough for us to call scholar as we turn our faces away. Or scholar enough to award him a “Ph” for his corrosive temperament and withhold the “D” so that we save the world from his boasting. Surely this way, we can know those who truly know their subjects; we will know those who we will discharge to the world and how; whether with flying colours, like the angels of God (for “angels fly because they take themselves lightly”), or like Lucifer who fell like a bag of yams. 

It was that philosopher turned mystic, Ludwig Wittgenstein who said, “A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.” Only a philosopher turned mystic could say something of such. Philosophers turned Lucifers cannot propose or suggest such. For they are always running to and fro seeking whom to devour with their endless proofs.

The Gentleman scholar once said something along the lines of growing up so that we can enjoy reading fairy tales again. This is true, and the spirit behind such utterance is as well true saying that we should look forward to a time when we can enjoy Tom and Jerry again.

For come to think of it, nothing marks the adolescent temper harder than the cynicism of wanting serious things. Now you want to “deal” with serious things. Because you believe that is what being an adult is —dealing with serious things. But we can allow this for a moment; just until you cease being an adolescent. Then we return to the basics of wanting to laugh again. Therefore in this matter is where the baby on his belly and grandpa on his stick find common ground: a need to have their bellies tickled. The other adults look on, wondering what wonders those extreme ends find in this.

Why is levity crucial to learning? The answer is simple: to learn to take oneself lightly. And this is essentially crucial today. That lacking a common literary canon that everyone deemed educated is expected to have read; or considering also that various subjects proliferate where it so happens that we do not have a certain common ground to runway and liftoff the crafts of conversation, everyone must bring tools which make conversation possible even among those who are not so versed in the literature. In other words, let us have debates consisting of jokes.

I have withdrawn from many a discussion upon hearing “You do not have the range for this discussion.” By this they mean “you haven’t read the exact things I have read on this matter.” It might look as if I exited for my deficiency. It is not the case. I exit because I have to go and intercede for my interlocutor’s stupidity. For with his Luciferian Ostrichness and with head buried in the sand and bum lifted to the earth, he loses all sense of his environment. That we, living at a time of hyperspecialisation and the explosive information age and meeting one another for the first time, it is not likely that I have read just the things he has read. He says that I haven’t read what he has on the matter. He doesn’t think that he has not read what I have read on the matter too. Lacking such awareness, I would fear to gift that man a mirror for Christmas lest he hurts himself by seeing himself for the first time.

It is for occasions such as this; occasions of literary inchoateness that I have nominated a new criterion. Bring forth, not your strong reasons that we might plead together, but your good jokes, that we might laugh together. You know now I think maybe Bomb Squads do not really need experts in chemical bombs and blue and red wires. They just need more comedians. Although I will burst into uncontrollable sobbing, like those knights of old, if ever a bomb was strapped to my chest and then Dave Chappelle strolled into my room with a microphone.

One objection, however, might be thrown at this. The objection that while niche, highly technical jokes are possible, the lay audience might not understand or appreciate it.

I understand this. I understand that it is rubbish. For if such objection comes, it means you have not been following this hallowed proposition from the beginning. 

Remember that in times past, the five year old decided whether you, an ardent student, knew your subject. Remember that everyone suddenly wanted to become the five year old that wanted things to be explained to them (“explain to me like I am five years old”). Why now do we want to run away from letting the audience judge your competence by your ability to make them laugh? If you construct the perfect neurobiological joke, but the audience lacks the brain to decipher it, did the tree really fall? 

No dear scholar, the criterion here being proposed is to construct a joke that stimulates a layperson’s interest to your subject. An invitation to your grand subject. If you do not give something to delight them, do not be surprised that they do not follow you.

This criterion is especially important for the sake of humbling —not to be mistaken for humiliating— the scholar. For it has always been the habit of scholars and intellectuals to turn up their noses at the laymen because they think learning some obscure but relevant subject —speak less of things like Gender Studies—gives them some superior standing. It has always been characteristic of men of learning to be pompous with the knowledge that others do not understand; even they might not understand it themselves, but the cloud and air of being learned is sometimes enough to cover their nakedness before the people. 

If the “five year old” madness had any truth in it, it was this: the audience is as much a participant in knowledge as the teacher. As such, the audience may withhold their approval and leave the intellectual to enjoy his knowledge for knowledge sake. The intellectual may convince himself that the laymen need him. But the truth is he needs them more. 

It is still yet common for these pompous men of learning to come and screech that we should “trust the experts.” Jokes on them, I trust no man; the arm of flesh fails and the expert’s arm fails expertly. My trust is in Christ alone.

Now that my heart is in the ring with this proposition, I must drop a caution and a word of warning. The hat is deceptive, who can cure it? As such, after realising the genius in making people erect jokes to validate their cumbersome learnings, a thought immediately enters the head of some. It is that temptation that has followed every good thing in this world: the temptation of “let’s teach so and so in schools.”

The reader knows the type. Once critical thinking arrived on the scene, they all started, like fangirls screaming, “Let us teach critical thinking in schools.” Then it was financial literacy. So they went “Let us teach financial literacy in schools.” Then it was how to turn stone into bread; “let us teach turning stones to bread in schools.” Worst but not the waist, fractions; so they said, “let us teach how to calculate taxes in schools.” I prohibit such temptation to accompany my proposition. 

Let it not occur to anyone to say, “Let us teach how to make good subject-matter jokes in schools.” I endured the one of critical thinking; as I endured the one of fractions and financial literacy. If you say, “Let us teach humour in schools,” I will say “Let us teach how to burn down schools in schools.” You have my ward.

Lastly, I must lead by example. I must tell a good joke. Here goes: why should I? I am not a scholar.