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Yesterday I was talking to my brother, a college junior, about why university-level education has to be so demanding and stressful for students. I just don't see how stretching (to the point of breaking) one's physical, mental, and even emotional capacities can possibly be a successful educational pedagogy. While it may teach skills like prioritizing and stress management, it also has the potential to breed a resentment of the educational process within students.

My brother sympathized. He said that he had read an article in the New Yorker several weeks ago about studies that show one's most brilliant ideas come at moments of complete calm. "This physicist who won the Noble Prize came up with his most imaginative theories when he was at his favorite strip club," said my brother, paraphrasing the findings of the article. (I'm trusting my brother on this one... also, please pardon the crudeness of mentioning a strip club in a homework assignment).

With this in mind, I think that is why I enjoyed General Chemistry lab as much as I did. Not only was I working with my hands, but my mind was engaged in a way that was calming, relaxing. I respect the efforts of scientists like Greene, who strive to make education, and especially science education, creative, magical. Science classes should be taught in that manner, and with real life examples. I experienced the success of this kind of teaching last year in gen-chem lab. One of my favorite labs was a three-week project in which we made biodiesel fuel. Not only was the lab topical to environmental issues, but it was also fun. Get-your-hands-dirty fun. The production of biodiesel is something I now grasp and understand, if only on an elementary level. Still, over spring break I talked to my uncle, a lobster fisherman in Maine, about the advantages of biodiesel over regular fuels, as well as explaining to him why, when producing biodiesel domestically, it is easy to botch a batch.

However, I've seen the pedagogical idea of synthesizing the "fundamentals" with a student's own imagination/innovation back fire. I cannot stand when teachers play the "guess what I'm thinking game" with their students. It seems that often, in an effort to spur a student's imagination and investigatory thinking, a teacher will FORCE them to be "creative," to try to find the solution to a problem before they are equipped with the proper tools/knowledge to begin to tackle it. The results can be humiliating for the student, who feels inferior for not "coming up with the most creative answer," and instead begins to feel the same kind of resentment toward a subject that I feel overworking creates.

So, how does a teacher teach well? And more specifically, how does a science teacher not only teach well, but also inspire his students?

I don't think anyone can answer that question, because like science itself, it has an ever-evolving answer. I do know that seeing the love of science about which Greene talks so personally in his article--the deep satisfaction that comes from discovery (and often it is merely a personal discovery, not an earth-shaking one, that is the most profound)--reflected in one's teacher can be truly inspiring. Having that joy demonstrated and reinforced helps me become more deeply engaged in a subject. Activities that promote such emotions are bound to triumph in the mind's of students. But to force the issue, to make a student feel he could never arrive at such a discovery because he simply "isn't smart enough," will immediately extinguish any spark of interest in the sciences, or any subject for that matter.

As a final thought, again involving the idea of joy involved in investigating the workings of the world, is about how I arrived at my interest in medicine. My interest in becoming a doctor is primarily about being a healer, an active servant to others. But, I could not choose such a path without a keen interest in understanding the human body, a subject I know next to nothing about. I can only assume this interest arose thanks to my mother and father, who both worked in the medical field, and who always took the time to explain to me when I was sick WHY I felt sick. Their teaching, but through explanation and mere example, supports that the best teachers are the one's who are passionate about their subject and patient enough to explain it in an encouraging, nurturing manner.