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Know-it-alls and Find-it-outs

By Vibha Singh ; Illustrations by Anup Singh

Once upon a time, there was an island called the 'Landof the Sun'. People of all shapes, sizes and appearances lived there. Everybody kneweverybody and they were like one big happy family.

But slowly, as time passed, the children grew biggerand had more children who grew bigger and had morechildren.

Things reached a stage where there were somany people in the island that not everybody kneweverybody else.

People started doing their own things,talking in their own languages and writing their ownscripts.

So the elders of the island came together anddecided to open a school where the children could betaught about the history, geography, rules, ritualsand languages of the people of the 'Land of the Sun'.

However, when it came to deciding on the teacher, thegroup of elders was equally divided between two of thecandidates - Ms. Know-it-all and Ms. Find-it-out. Since they couldn't decide on which candidate to gowith, and being an amicable group of people, theelders decided to have two schools, each being run bythe two candidates.

The islanders then sent their children to the schoolsof their choices.

Misses Know-it-all and Find-it-out ran their schoolsvery differently from each other. As a matter of fact,they were poles apart in their methods of teaching.

Miss Know-it-all was a total disciplinarian whobelieved that children should be only seen and notheard. Unless, they were asked a question and theywere replying to it. Her belief was simple. She wasthere to ask questions and the children were there toanswer it, after she had taught them the lesson.

And god forbid, if they were to disagree with any of herteachings. You see, the children were not allowed tothink.

On the other hand, Ms. Find-it-out believed that shedid not have all the answers. So everybody was allowedto ask questions and everybody tried to find theanswers, individually or together.

Slowly, the islanders became aware of this distinctionand started taking sides. They broke up the islandinto two different zones and built up a wall so thatone set of people did not interact with the others.

Time passed and the children grew bigger. They in turnhad children who went to the same schools. People onone side of the island came to be called 'Know-it-all'and people on the other side of it 'Find-it-outs'.

But as the population grew, the space available forthe people to live in got smaller and smaller. Tillone day the people in the 'Know-it-all' land had nostanding space. As they pushed and shoved each other,the wall dividing them from the people of the'Find-it-out' just gave way. The wall broke down andthe two divided people looked at each other for thefirst time in the century.

And what did they see?

The people of the 'Find-it-out' land saw a whole lotof identical looking people staring at them withsimilar expressions on their faces. These were the'Know-it-alls'.