The Wit’s Guide to Education
Or, death to webinars
Education is not a journey but a destination. Once you’ve learned all you need to know and your brain is full, you may be excused. The trick, of course, is accurately measuring brain satiety. And that’s why you always read from the top of the meniscus when you’re studying the liberal arts and the bottom when things are getting STEMy.
“Without a gentle contempt for education, no man’s education is complete.”
— G.K. Chesterton
You may wonder how I effortlessly recalled that valuable neuronugget about meniscus reading from Grade 7 chemistry. The answer lies in the very definition of education: Everything you’ve ever been taught minus everything you’ve forgotten multiplied by the inefficient coefficient1 raised to the power of whoever you’re trying to impress. Whomever? Whomsoever!
“‘Whom are you,’ said he, for he had been to night school.”
— George Abe
In my time working for an educational software company, I learned that learning is not something anyone truly wants to do. Especially people who’ve already learned quite a bit and as a result have a string of initials after their names. Sure, everyone likes having learned, but the process by which you are humiliated by having people who are demonstrably smarter than you tell you things they expect you to remember? Uniformly horrible!
“We can be offered only two kinds of information — what we already know, which is boring, and what we do not, which is humiliating.”
— Quentin Crisp
Despite this unspeakable truth, our species still pretty much uniformly prizes education. We deserve gold stars for that, or at least participation trophies. Though we’ve already engineered generations of systematic grade inflation, so we’re right where we need to be.
“The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s leisure.”
— Sydney J. Harris
Dostoevsky wrote that the best education is one sacred memory from childhood. Vonnegut suggested another “quickie education for a child, which, in its way, is almost as salutary: Meeting a human being who is tremendously respected by the adult world, and realizing that that person is actually a malicious lunatic.”
“You can’t expect a boy to be vicious until he’s been to a good school.”
— Saki
It’s long been said that the most beautiful words in the English language are “cellar door,” not for what they describe but for how they curl out of the mouth. (Dorothy Parker agreed, but also nominated “cheque enclosed.”) As a corollary to that observation, it may be argued that the ugliest word in the English language is “webinar.” Like a seminar but less compelling! It is safe to assume that anyone who hosts one has nothing to teach you. I know what you’re thinking: Even if it’s on Cisco WebEx? Sadly, yes.
“Most people tire of a lecture in ten minutes; clever people can do it in five. Sensible people never go to lectures at all.”
— Stephen Leacock
The second-best education freely available on the infobahn is Look Around You, a 2002 BBC series of eight 10-minute parodies painstakingly created in the style of 1970s science film strips. Once you learn that germs come from Germany, everything falls into place.
“For every person who wants to teach there are approximately thirty who don’t want to learn.”
— W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman
The best education, naturally, comes from carefully sourced quotations delivered in a weekly email format. This one was the epigraph to Garner’s Quotations, one of the most enjoyable modern collections:
“Sometimes it seems the only accomplishment my education ever bestowed on me, the ability to think in quotations.”
— Margaret Drabble
My paid subscribers are certifiable!
Sure, you’ve read this newsletter for a few hundred weeks and have thus become exponentially wittier, but how can you show it from across a crowded room? Obviously you need a sticker that says “I’m a Certified Wit thanks in some small part to GetWitQuick.com,” and such stickers will be mailed out with September’s Riposte Card. But only to paid subscribers!
Quote Vote
“The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.”
— J. Frank Dobie
And yet, doesn’t this describe all of life? For next week’s issue, let’s throw some paint on the canvas from across the room.
Get Wit Quick No. 219 is a terminal degree: Everyone off, this week’s issue is now out of service. If I taught a class, I would totally assign my own book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting, just like that infamous McGill anthropology professor who made everyone buy The Sauna as Symbol. Speaking of, Happy Rosh Ha-Sauna to all my Finnish readers! May you have a sweat new year! With every tap of the ❤️ a new cross-cultural pun is bjorn.
either ⅛ or 0.125, whichever comes first in a three-legged race.