Questionnaire

ENTRY QUESTIONNAIRE

The existence of correct answers has yet to be established

01. What did school never teach you that it really should have?

02. If you could go back to school and choose exactly what to study — subjects, qualities, skills, knowledge — what would you choose? What do you hope to learn at 404 School?

03. What question have you long wanted to ask, but never found the right person to ask?

04. We all make mistakes. Which of yours would you like to put right? And which would you happily make again?

05. What completely useless thing can you do remarkably well — and with great pleasure?

06. In what field would you happily be a complete beginner, knowing next to nothing?

II. THE CURIOSITY TEST

07. Which widely accepted idea about the world strikes you as suspicious? And what about our ideas of human beings?

08. If it were proved tomorrow that one of humanity’s fundamental beliefs was wrong, which would you most like it to be?

09. Which ability would you choose: understanding the language of animals, seeing the probabilities of future events, or being able to laugh at the world — and yourself? Why?

10. What experiment would you conduct if you had unlimited resources and never had to justify its practical value to anyone?

11. Is there anything you believed as a child that you have never quite stopped believing?

12. While walking down the street, you come across a lost-property office for things humanity has misplaced — qualities, ideas, abilities. What would you expect to find on its shelves?

III. THE CURRICULUM

13. Which of these doors would you try first?

Cabinet of Curiosities

Greenhouse of Possibilities

Laboratory of Natural Intelligence

Anthropological Observatory

Workshop of Imagination

The Wardrobe (NB: The wardrobe may, of course, be just a wardrobe.)

14. What subject is our curriculum desperately missing? Give it a name. The less obvious its usefulness, the better.

15. Whom would you invite to teach a single class at the 404 School — someone alive today, a figure from history, or a fictional character?

16. What could you teach other people in an hour? It needn’t be useful, but it must be fun.

IV. ADVANCED QUESTIONS

17. What would you rather find inside the wardrobe: Narnia, an emergency exit from your own life story, or something utterly strange and unexpected?

18. If you could ask an alien just one question, what would it be?

19. If the 404 School awarded diplomas for qualities that nobody else ever assesses, what diploma would you like to earn?

20. Imagine you are appointed head of 404 School for a day. What is the first decree you would issue?

21. Complete the sentence: “I’ll know I’ve found a wonderful school if…”

V. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

22. What is something everyone else seems to find perfectly obvious, but you still don’t understand?

23. If you could erase one thing from your memory so you could discover it again for the first time, what would you choose?

24. What do you consider the most underrated discovery in human history? And the most overrated?

25. Is there a question you would rather never have answered — at least not in this lifetime?

26. Imagine that tomorrow one scientific discipline is to be abolished. Which would you save first? And which would you definitely not save?

VI. PRACTICAL EXERCISES IN THE IMPOSSIBLE

27. If you could spend a day inside the mind of another being — human, animal, or anything else — whose would it be?

28. You discover a door that wasn’t there yesterday. What would have to be written on it to make you walk straight in?

29. You have been asked to invent a new sense organ for human beings. What should it detect?

30. Which law of nature would you temporarily suspend — purely for experimental purposes?

31. If you could ask one question of an object near you, which object would you choose, and what would you ask it?

VII. THE CURRICULUM STILL AWAITING APPROVAL

32. Which three of these courses would you sign up for first?

History of Discoveries That Never Happened

Comparative Ethology of Misconceptions

The Practical Engineering of Coincidence

Introduction to Interspecies Diplomacy

Archaeology of the Future

The Theory and Practice of Doing Nothing

Introduction to Who Knows What

33. What profession that doesn’t yet exist should already be recognised as essential?

34. If every exam at the 404 School had to take the form of an experiment, what exam would you devise for yourself?

35. Which appeals to you more: finding the answer to a question that has troubled humanity for centuries (which one?), or discovering a question nobody has ever thought to ask? Any idea what that question might be?

VIII. QUESTIONS WITH NO RIGHT ANSWER

36. What do you think humanity has been doing (or thinking) completely wrong for so long that nobody even notices anymore?

37. Which event in history would you like to witness with your own eyes — without intervening, purely as an observer?

38. You have been appointed director of Museum 404. Which of humanity’s mistakes would you put on display first?

39. You can send your past self one object as a clue, with no explanatory note. What would you send? And what would you send your future self?

40. Imagine meeting your present-day self a year after enrolling at the 404 School. What change in yourself would you hope to see?

41. What question would you ask a teacher to find out whether they are truly ready to teach at 404 School?

42. If you could put up a sign at the entrance to the 404 School banning just one thing, what would it say?

Name (any name you like — how would you like to be known at the 404 School?):

Contact details (if you would like the 404 School to stay in touch):