He stands before the class and points to the board. He poses a question from the text.
"What is wisdom?" he asks, pointing to the big, purple word. The students are quiet for a moment.
She comes up with a quick, silly answer in her mind. Street smarts. Everyone calls out quick guesses--knowledge, beliefs, justifications, but her mind wanders to the wisdom within street smarts. She imagines old philosophers as street urchins, hobos, and pictures them fighting over a can of beans. One of them whips out a shiv. A philosopher, Plato in her fantasy, falls to the ground as Socrates stands above him, smirking, and greedily snatching up the can of beans.
Refocusing on class, the teacher makes a remark, "can you justify your beliefs and are you wise enough to hear others?" She realizes that in the midst of her daydream, she's missed a crucial part of the lecture. What is wisdom?
Yeah, she thinks decidedly, street smarts.
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