The footballer is coming

About this video

On Monday morning the head teacher tells Mr Okoro: "A player from the town football club may visit us next month." Mr Okoro tells his class: "A footballer is coming to visit!" At break Sami tells his friends: "A famous footballer is coming next week!" By lunch, half the school believes the most famous player in the country is coming on Friday. Nobody lied. So where did the story go wrong?

In Knowledge Level 1 we saw that most of what we know comes from what other people tell us, and that it works when each link in the chain knew what they passed on. This video looks closer at the chain itself, the chain of telling. The head teacher heard it first-hand: she spoke to the club herself. Mr Okoro heard it second-hand, from her, and Sami third-hand. Each link was honest, and each changed the story a little: "may visit" became "is coming", "a player" became "a famous footballer", "next month" became "next week" and then "Friday".

In 1932 the British psychologist Frederic Bartlett tested this. He gave people a strange old story to retell to the next person, who retold it to the next. Each time the story got shorter, strange details dropped out or turned ordinary, and it changed to fit what the tellers already expected. People pass on what they remember and what makes sense to them, not the exact words. So when news reaches you, count how many links it passed through, ask whether each link knew what they passed on, and try to reach the first-hand source. That is why good newspapers say where a fact came from. This video goes with the A Story Passed Along lesson of Knowledge Level 2 on Knaph.

Transcript

1. 0:00The head teacher hears a player from the town club may visit next month.
2. 0:05Passed along, may became is coming. A player became famous. Then, Friday!
3. 0:11Nobody lied. Each link passed on what they remembered, and what made sense.
4. 0:17So count the links. Each one is a chance for the story to change.
5. 0:23Then reach the first-hand source, the one who spoke to the club.
6. 0:29Count the links. Find who knew it first-hand.