Educated?

Educated in the former Soviet Union with a Master’s degree in something, I would like to share with you my colleague’s delightful description of how mountains are made. We were on an outing, taking some guests out to the tourist spots of the city. The guests in question happen to be Natural Disaster experts, they were in fact here visiting for a workshop on the subject. As you may know, this is a mountainous country in the extreme; it is no exaggeration to say that you can see mountain peaks, valley basins and plateaux at the same time in almost every place. This city, as with many others has mountains surging up in the middle of the urban sprawl, needless to say the mountains did not burst through the cities, rather the cities built up around the feet of the mountains. These mountains are different to the usual jagged mountains of say the Himalayas, these are round topped desert mountains of limestone. Due to the soft stone they have many cavities, some occurring naturally and others with human assistance providing excellent hideaways for those that wish to hide. As our little group was standing on the side of one of said mountains looking out over the curvature of the earth in the plateau and river basin below, we got onto the discussion of how mountains are made. And I know that you are intrigued to hear the answer. Well according to my esteemed colleague it went something like this:
Looking up at the sky, with a slightly nervous smile on his lips, he ventured that he did not know exactly how mountains were made but he thought that it was something to do with the stars. “There are stars and planets in the sky and they move about, when one star comes too close to another, or a planet then…” and using his two fists, and still smiling somewhat sheepishly, he rolled one fist over the other “something like this happens, they collide together and roll and that is how mountains are made on the surface of the earth.” Then he laughed, but he was serious. He doesn’t know if it’s scientific but that is his idea. I clapped my hands gently in delight at the wonderful idea, also slightly in awe of how an educated man could believe such a thing or have so little information about general geology and knowledge that such a suggestion could be plausible. We were gentle with him as it would be wrong and unnecessary to shame him, and I knew it would not be right that I correct him and so I gestured to the Dr. of Natural Disasters who was in our party and said that maybe he could suggest to us the scientific answer – and so we learned about when tectonic plates of the earth collide and the different mountains that are formed. I wonder if this or the celestial explanation will be given to my colleagues children if they ever ask how mountains are made?