As readers of Grow With the Flow know, I open the book with what I call an “old parable.” I retell it as Sages, and I use it as an introduction to the idea that contemporary theories of intelligence are each seeing part of a larger whole.

This afternoon, a high school student and I were doing what I call a “Battle Plan,” looking over his semester courses, planning how he’ll handle each one. In his materials for one class, I noticed a poem that started “It was six men of Indostan…”

Wham! Talk about Proust’s madeleine! I hadn’t seen that poem since I was a kid, but it suddenly flooded back, along with a sharp memory of my Nana – surely she must have read it to me!

It took only a moment on Google to find the original, written by American poet, John Godfrey Saxe. Never heard of him? Me either. He was from Vermont, a graduate of Middlebury College, worked in newspapers, and apparently wrote some good stuff.

Wikipedia has a picture of him

(In my defense, Web sources seem to agree that Saxe based his poem on an old parable.) Here’s the poem:

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”

The Second, feeling of the tusk
Cried, “Ho! what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up he spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee:
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope.
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Most versions end there, perhaps suitably for kids. But the original has a tag:

Moral:
So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen.

(I found this version at About.com)

Your child can hear it amusingly read at a remarkable site called Facing Issues in Contemporary Society, which is apparently part of Web-based resources for the Saskatchewan schools, who must have developed it as a distance learning tool for their thinly spread population.

Well, this wasn’t what I planned to do with the evening, but…..