What we believe

Willard Bandola

In an effort to teach my Social 10 class that we all share a common knowledge, I posed the following question: "Who invented the airplane?"

Most hands went up immediately and before I could ask any one student for the answer, it was clearly voiced by a number of students. More information quickly followed supplying details of the event and the people involved. Satisfied that the lesson had been introduced, I was ready to look at other examples when I realized that one persistent hand was still held high. I was pleased to see that one of my exchange students wanted to join in the conversation.

"Sir," Juanita began in her halting English, "in our studies in Brazil, we are taught that the airplane was invented by Santos Dumont."

I’d never heard of Santos Dumont so I asked for the spelling and wrote it on the board. I then asked Juanita for more information; her polite insistence convinced me to search for Dumont on the Internet. The search did not take long. Indeed Dumont was a significant figure in aviation with a legitimate claim, although my western-based sources were not crediting him with displacing the Wright brothers. Dumont was acknowledged as an inventor in other fields, as well.

I shared my findings with my students, and we agreed that an extra lesson had been learned.

We must always be ready to re-evaluate what we believe to be true and what we are told is true. And with that in mind, I asked my students to search the name "Alexis Ledovski." The discussion should prove interesting.

Willard Bandola is a frequent contributor to Moot Points. He is a high school distance education teacher at Camrose Composite High School, in Camrose.