Representational image.A first grade school teacher who quizzed his class with a riddle met with an answer far more meaningful than he had ever imagined.
Bret Turner, a teacher at the private Head-Royce School in the hills of Oakland, decided to task his class with a simple, yet deep riddle: "I am the beginning of everything, the end of everywhere. I'm the beginning of eternity, the end of time & space. What am I?"
The standard answer to the famous riddle is the letter 'e'. Instead, the first pupil questioned gave a philosophical answer beyond their years.
'Death', they replied, which led to an "awed, sombre and reflective hush" across the room, according to Bret.
Young children often proffer profound thoughts. But the sincerity and bluntness of the youngster still moved Bret, who shared the whole thing on Twitter.
The teacher added that others responded with 'all stuff', 'the end', and 'nothingthing', existential answers arguably far more interesting than the letter 'e'.
Bret recalled: "Before I finally revealed the 'correct' answer to the riddle, to a largely unimpressed audience, I fielded other guesses that continued along a similarly existential vein."
Bret's tweet has since amassed nearly 100,000 retweets. A lot of people are impressed with his class.
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