Juliette gave a keynote address to a group of educators in Canada a few days ago and one of the podcasts helping me through today's workout was a WBUR interview of Salman Kahn of the Kahn Academy.
This seems like a good excuse to talk about education.
Clearly I'm no expert on the subject, but like you I've been around formal and informal systems for most of my life. I'm an admirer of what Kahn has done and hope it continues to grow, but it is only part of the puzzle just as are approaches like Jaime Escalante's. I'm more interested in how passion and curiosity are sparked.
My formal K-12 education was fairly vanilla - pubic schools in Montana. Two of my teachers struck me as outstanding at what they did, but neither ignited a passion in me - rather I saw a bit of their passion and learned more about the subjects they were teaching than I would have with other teachers. But the basic nuts and bolts were solid and helped prepare me for college where I found my passion could burn. I think I had a good K-12 experience, but there was just one more thing that influenced me during those years...
A lifelong passion did flicker into existence early on - probably when I was eight or nine. Montana, it turns out, is "Big Sky Country." During the day there were clouds, storms, rainbows, lighting, wind, the sun and any number of fantastic things to watch. Night was even better as the place could get impressively dark and the milky way was magnificent in the Summer along with meteor showers, auroras and much more. You would see these things and you had to know why.
The school and public library had some science books, but not all were accessible to kids. Some were too easy and others were college textbooks that were way above me. I needed to find the right level and was having problems finding adults who didn't find me completely annoying.
Amateur radio was more popular then than it is today. But even in its prime there was a fundamental education problem - how to you teach an eleven year old kid electronic and radio skills that are usually associated with the freshman level of college? Just as important, how do you deal with the fact that the density of kids who are really interested is low as is that of adults who practice the hobby?
The solution the community came up with became known as elmering. An elmer is a mentor - someone who would take a kid who had a passionate interest and provide them with books, instruction, usually some old gear to tinker with and a lot of experience that didn't appear in the books. The idea was that at some point when you were a seasoned adult you would reciprocate and the hobby would perpetuate itself.
The beauty of a functioning student mentor relationship is the right level can be found along with the right encouragement. There are even times, as I have learned as a mentor, that the roles can flip.
I was lucky enough to have been something of a free range kid. I managed to get my homework done as well as work around the house and had enough free time to get involved in radio for awhile as well as to just stare up at that amazing sky and wonder.
The librarian suggested that I write to professors with my questions. It seemed like a good idea and I sent out dozens of letters scrawled in my twelve year old hand over a period of a few months before anyone answered. A professor had written back, but rather than directly answering my questions he gave me some new ones to think about along with some hints about how to think about them. I had no idea what a physicist was, let alone a solid state physicist, but here was someone willing to help.
I remember the first letter vividly. It took me about ten days of thinking and working to get enough that I thought I had it. I posted my letter and, mirabile dictu, about six days later the reply came. It was electrifying - while I had figured out a piece of the question, he carefully pointed out something else. The problem turned out to be much richer than I had imagined and that struck me as beautiful. Another week of answering his exercises and then nearly a week of waiting for his reply.
It was education by a sort of internet - one that used physical packets with a three or four day transmission latency. The lengthy latencies turned out to be perfect. Quick answers to my questions would have spoiled things and I would never have learned how to focus and concentrate deeply. An added benefit was the attachments were sometimes chewy and chocolatey.
This extracurricular education went on until I left for college and grew to involve a second professor - an astrophysicist. I never thought of it as education at the time, but they were teaching me how to ask questions and, more importantly, how to observe. Why is it that the colors on the second rainbow are inverted? Why is it that the region between the two rainbows is dark? Is the light from a rainbow polarized and how would you go about measuring it? Why do clouds look white and often have boundaries? How do you measure the speed of light? How do you find out what stars are made of? How long will our Sun burn? How will it end? ...
You learn questions like these can be approached by a kid and later, when re-examined when you have more experience, the same questions have richer answers that tell you a bit more about nature. These answers, if you are lucky, have even richer questions attached. You learn that watching and learning how to formulate appropriate questions - questions that you can actually answer - is a critical skill. You learn there are amazing surprises.
Along the way there was a need to improve the tools I had at my disposal. Some of the mentoring focused on this and, without realizing it, I was learning a fair amount of math. I didn't really think of it as math at the time - these were just tools that made it easier to sort out what was going on.
There was a strong element of play to all of this. You would work down a path and find that didn't make sense, but there was no penalty for going back to where you started and trying another path. You lost a bit of time, but you also learned a bit. It seemed very different from school where wrong answers were penalized.
This wasn't rigorous science. When I was finally in college and grad school some rigor came and the learning was more intense. But it was an exciting exploration and it gave me a sense of what I wanted to do.
There were some downsides if the kid focuses too much in one area. I wasn't exactly the most social kid in the world and some of that probably persists to this day. I didn't get involved in a rich variety of extracurricular activities and regret some of that. In particularly I mostly stayed away from athletic activities which took years for me to realize their importance. But the mentoring did change my life and over scheduling would have been very counterproductive. Kids need a lot of time for self directed playing, daydreaming and thinking.
Since then I've mentored perhaps a half dozen young people. Some of this was working with students through a fantastic program the old Bell Labs had and some of it was more informal - just having a curious kid get in touch about something.1
These days the Internet provides a lot in the way of new opportunity, but at the same time I think that some of the basic questions kids have are answered a bit too easily. There is something special about wrestling with an idea and the thrill of finding the answer a week or more later. The Internet is great - but more is necessary.
I love what Dean Kamen is doing for aspiring engineers and I'm sure there are many opportunities in a variety of areas, but the creaky old postal system turned out to be nearly perfect for this person.
Curiosity and play are among the most powerful tools I know. I wouldn't claim to know much, but I do know where there is adventure and realize asking questions and hoping to uncover more can last a lifetime.
And if you have never mentored anyone, I strongly recommend it. When it works well there are few things as rewarding and you get more than you might imagine in return.
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1 One ninth grader was fascinated by cosmic rays and I showed her how to build a cosmic ray telescope .. later I wrote up the notes for any teenager who might have a similar interest (three parts). Oh - she went to Caltech a few years later.
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