Go Look It Up!

When I was a child, or perhaps when my older brother and sister were children (there are 11 and 6 years between the three of us), my parents bought a set of Book of Knowledge encyclopedias, the bookshelf to hold them, and the annual volumes to update the set. 

They sat against a wall in our living room, mostly ignored—at least by me.  Ignored, that is, until I would ask a question at dinnertime that no one could answer.  And then I heard, "Go look it up."  Are those not the words an 8- or 10-year-old child least wants to hear?  Please just answer my question so I don't have to read the letters on the volumes, search for the alphabetical entry for whatever the topic, and then return to the table to read it to everyone.  But if nothing, my parents were strict and there was no getting out of it.

The encyclopedias were heavy, had few illustrations, and fewer colored illustrations—perhaps a two-page layout for a topic or two per volume.  The print was tiny, the lines were tightly spaced, and, to be honest, I found them boring.  Maybe I didn't like them because they gave me too much information for my age.

My parents placed a high esteem on the value of education.  There was no doubt in any of our minds, my brother's, my sister's, and mine, that we would continue our education after high school.  And, of course, it did.

In addition to the Book of Knowledge, we also had a hefty dictionary that was well used.

By the time I was in junior high school we were still a one-car family with my father working turns.  With the nearest public library half an hour's ride away, those encyclopedias became, if not friends, at least good acquaintances.  Though I didn't like them but I learned from them.  I found answers to the question at hand.  I learned how to look up information in the written word.  I learned how to take notes.  And I learned how to reference a source for a report.  Later still I learned about copyright and eventually learned to use other resources for research and just for personal information.

I can't say that my parents' method of encouraging me to look things up fostered an interest in learning, or in searching for answers beyond what those who were older than me knew, but it did give me a foundation for learning.  And perhaps they fostered a curious mind, one that wanted to know answers to questions.  I continue to have lots of question.

We've come such a long way from encyclopedias in book form.  While books still have a place in education and learning, for a simple question with a simple answer it's so much easier to look for an answer on the internet.  When, in a discussion with my husband or daughter, we come to a question we don't know the answer to, one of us will pull out our phone and ask Google. 

I wonder what my parents would think of today's response to their decades-ago directive to "Go look it up," seeing young people using a phone or tablet instead of a set of encyclopedias.  How times change! 

-–Nancy.

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