Teaching and the Expanding Knowledge - Science, Vol. 146, No. 3649, December 4, 1964, pp. 1278-1279

[Samlyn Josfyn]

Our attempt to harmonize teaching with expanding--or rather exploding--
knowledge would be hopeless should growth not entail simplification. I
will dwell on the sunny side. Knowledge is a sacred cow, and my
problem will be how we can milk her while keeping clear of her horns.

One of my reasons for being optimistic is that the foundations of
nature are simple. This was brought home to me many years ago when I
joined the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. I did this in
the hope that by rubbing elbows with those great atomic physicists and
mathematicians I would learn something about living matters. But as
soon as I revealed that in any living system there are more than two
electrons, the physicists would not speak to me. With all their
computers they could not say what this third electron might do. The
remarkable thing is that it knows exactly what to do. So that little
electron knows something that all the wise men of Princeton don't, and
this can only be something very simple. Nature, basically, must be
much simpler than she looks to us. She looks to us like a coded letter
for which we have no code. To the degree to which our methods become
less clumsy and more adequate and we find out nature's code, things
must become not only clearer, but very much simpler, too.

Science tends to generalize, and generalization means simplification.
My own science, biology, is today not only very much richer than it
was in my student days, but is simpler, too. Then it was horribly
complex, being fragmented into a great number of isolated principles.
Today these are all fused into one single complex with the atomic
model at its center. Cosmology, quantum mechanics, DNA and genetics
are all, more or less, parts of one and the same story--a most
wonderful simplification. And generalizations are also more satisfying
to the mind than details. We, in our teaching, should place more
emphasis on generalizations than on details. Of course, details and
generalizations must be in a proper balance: generalization can be
reached only from details, while it is the generalization which gives
value and interest to the detail.

After this preamble I would like to make a few general remarks, first,
about the main instrument of teaching: books. There is a widely spread
misconception about the nature of books which contain knowledge. It is
thought that such books are something the contents of which have to be
crammed into our heads. I think the opposite is closer to the truth.
Books are there to keep the knowledge in while we use our heads for
something better. Books may also be a better place for such knowledge.
In my own head any book-knowledge has a half-life of a few weeks. So I
leave knowledge, for safe-keeping, to books and libraries and go
fishing, sometimes for fish, sometimes for new knowledge.

I know that I am shockingly ignorant. I could take exams in college
but could not pass any of them. Worse than that: I treasure my
ignorance; I feel snug in it. It does not cloud my naiveté, my
simplicity of mind, my ability to marvel childishly at nature and
recognize a miracle even if I see it every day. If, with my seventy-
one years, I am still digging on the fringes of knowledge, I owe it to
this childish attitude. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
see God, says the Bible. For they can understand nature, say I.

I do not want to be misunderstood--I do not depreciate knowledge, and I
have worked long and hard to know something of all fields of science
related to biology. Without this I could do no research. But I have
retained only what I need for an understanding, an intuitive grasp,
and in order to know in which book to find what. This was fun, and we
must have fun, or else our work is no good.

My next remark is about time relations. The time spent in school is
relatively short compared to the time thereafter. I am stressing this
because it is widely thought that everything we have to know to do our
job well we have to learn in school. This is wrong because, during the
long time which follows school, we are apt to forget, anyway, what we
have learned there, while we have ample time for study. In fact, most
of us have to learn all our lives, and it was with gray hair that I
took up the study of quantum mechanics, myself. So what the school has
to do, in the first place, is to make us learn how to learn, to whet
our appetites for knowledge, to teach us the delight of doing a job
well and the excitement of creativity, to teach us to love what we do,
and to help us to find what we love to do.

My friend Gerard quoted Fouchet as advising us to take from the altar
of knowledge the fire, not the ashes. Being of more earthly
disposition, I would advise you to take the meat, not the bones.
Teachers, on the whole, have a remarkable preference for bones,
especially dry ones. Of course, bones are important, and now and then
we all like to suck a bit on them, but only after having eaten the
meat. What I mean to say is that we must not learn things, we must
live things. This is true for almost everything. Shakespeare and all
of literature must be lived, music, paintings, and sculptures have to
be made, drama has to be acted. This is true even for history: we
should live through it, through the spirit of the various periods,
instead of storing their data. I am glad to say that this trend--to
live things--is becoming evident even in the teaching of sciences. The
most recent trend is not to teach the simpler laws of nature, but to
make our students discover them for themselves in simple experiments.

Of course, I know data are important. They may be even interesting,
but only after we have consumed the meat, the substance. After this we
may even become curious about them and retain them. But taught before
this they are just dull, and they dull, if not kill, the spirit.

It is a widely spread opinion that memorizing will not hurt, that
knowledge does no harm. I am afraid it may. Dead knowledge dulls the
spirit, fills the stomach without nourishing the body. The mind is not
a bottomless pit, and if we put in one thing we might have to leave
out another. By a more live teaching we can fill the soul and reserve
the mind for the really important things. We may even spare time we
need for expanding subjects.

Such live teaching, which fills both the soul and the mind, may help
man to meet one of his most formidable problems, what to do with
himself. The most advanced societies, like ours, can already produce
more than they can consume, and with advancing automation the
discrepancy is increasing rapidly. We try to meet the challenge by
producing useless things, like armaments. But this is no final answer.
In the end we will have to work less. But then, what will we do with
ourselves? Lives cannot be left empty. Man needs excitement and
challenge, and in an affluent society everything is within easy reach.
And boredom is dangerous, for it can easily make a society seek
excitement in political adventure and in brinksmanship, following
irresponsible and ignorant leaders. Our own society has recently shown
alarming signs of this trend. In a world where atomic bombs can fly
from one end to the other in seconds, this is tantamount to suicide.
By teaching live arts and science, the schools could open up the
endless horizons and challenges of intellectual and artistic life and
make whole life an exciting adventure. I believe that in our teaching
not only must details and generalizations be in balance, but our whole
teaching must be balanced with general human values.

I want to conclude with a few remarks on single subjects, first,
science. Science has two aspects: it has to be part of any education,
of humanistic culture. But we also have to teach science as
preparation for jobs. If we distinguish sharply between these two
aspects, then the talk about the two cultures will lose its meaning.

A last remark I want to make is about the teaching of history, not
only because it is the most important subject, but also because I
still have in my nostrils the acid smell of my own sweat which I
produced when learning its data. History has two chapters: National
History and World History. National History is a kind of family affair
and I will not speak about it. But what is world history? In its
essence it is the story of man, how he rose from his animal status to
his present elevation. This is a fascinating story and is linked to a
limited number of creative men, its heroes, who created new knowledge,
new moral or ethical values, or new beauty. Opposing this positive
side of history there is a negative, destructive side linked to the
names of kings, barons, generals, and dictators who, with their greed
and lust for power, made wars, fought battles, and mostly created
misery, destroying what other men had built. These are the heroes of
the history we teach at present as world history. Not only is this
history negative and lopsided, it is false, too, for it omits the
lice, rats, malnutrition, and epidemics which had more to do with the
course of things than generals and kings, as Zinsser ably pointed out.
The world history we teach should also be more truthful and includes
the stench, dirt, callousness, and misery of past ages, to teach us to
appreciate progress and what we have. We need not falsify history;
history has a tendency to falsify itself, because only the living
return from the battlefield to tell stories. If the dead could return
but once and tell about their ignominous end, history and politics
would be different today. A truer history would also be simpler.

As the barriers between the various sciences have disappeared, so the
barriers between science and humanities may gradually melt away.
Dating through physical methods has become a method of research in
history, while x-ray spectra and microanalysis have become tools in
the study of painting. I hope that the achievements of human
psychology may help us, also, to rewrite human history in a more
unified and translucent form.

The story of man's progress is not linked to any period, nation,
creed, or color, and could teach our youngsters a wider human
solidarity. This they will badly need when rebuilding political and
human relations, making them compatible with survival.

In spite of its many chapters, our teaching has, essentially, but one
object, the production of men who can fill their shoes and stand erect
with their eyes on the wider horizons. This makes the school, on any
level, into the most important public institution and the teacher into
the most important public figure. As we teach today, so the morrow
will be.