Summary: Some people seem so incredibly good at their field, that one can understand why the Romans attributed outstanding performance to a 'genius', a spirit sent by the Gods to inspire the fortunate individual. However, when studying the lives of prodigies and eminent persons, it becomes clear that eminence in any field takes lots of practice for even the most 'talented' - at least 10 years. Unless you're a painter...
'What nonsense is that?' Tom Poes exclaimed. You gave Sir Oliver the recipe for making gold, which involved molten lead, that needed to be stirred...'
'With a stone', the other added. 'Stirring and stirring, around and around and around. 123,456,789 times; for it is not the formula that is hard, it is the work! After stirring 123,456,789 times the stone has become the philosopher's stone, and only then the lead it touches turns into gold.'
Tom Poes and Roerik Omenom, 'The lead reformer', Marten Toonder
When watching or hearing prodigies or world class experts, it can sometimes be hard to believe that those people are mere humans. How can those people create the most wonderful music, hit the impossible ball, develop such simple yet marvelous theories? It is no wonder the Romans explained extremely high ability with the concept 'genius', denoting that there must have been a special spirit, the genius, instilled by the gods at birth into the fortunate individual.
The existence of prodigies like Mozart, Tiger Woods, or for example Bobby Fischer in chess seems to lend extra credence to the 'genius' idea. However, one should remember that prodigies are called prodigies because they perform much better in a certain field than other children. For example, Tiger Woods won his first golf competition at age 2 (the Under Age 10 section of the Drive, Pitch, and Putt competition at the Navy Golf Course in Cypress, California). However, he was not able to beat his father, who was merely a good amateur golfer, until age 11. So while the golfing skill of Woods was extraordinary for a child his age, in absolute terms Woods was by far not yet good enough to take a serious shot at the world championships: he won his first major trophy in the adult competition at age 21, at which time he had been golfing for more than 19 years. Similarly, Mozart was indeed a child prodigy, but his first composition that is still regarded as a masterwork (instead of a pretty good work – for a 10 year old) was the Piano Concerto no. 9, written when Mozart was 21 years old. By that time, he had had composition lessons for at least 10 years. Bobby Fischer, who was not yet quite an adult when he became a chess grand master at age 15, had nevertheless been practicing chess for 9 years already.
In conclusion, even prodigies apparently need to put in time to reach an (adult) world-class level in their chosen field.
Researchers who looked at prodigies as well as people who were not considered prodigies but nevertheless reached great eminence in their field (for example Einstein, Darwin, Marie Curie, Picasso), discovered that all of them had spent at least 10 years (or estimated to about 10,000 hours) mastering their field before they produced their first masterpiece. This finding has been so consistent, that it has been dubbed the '10 year rule': over a decade of practice is needed to excel in any field.
Now, the exact number of 10 years is not entirely accurate or absolute: it depends on the field. If a field is relatively young, competition is relatively low or the knowledge required is relatively limited, it seems to be easier to reach world-class levels. Examples are the World Memory Championships (very recently instated), painting (where the rule is rather a six-year rule than a 10 year rule, probably since there may be relatively fewer active painters and hence less competition than in other fields; or would there be less knowledge required to produce novel and high-quality works?), and physics/maths, especially in the past (winners of Nobel prizes in physics tended to be younger than chemists and biologists/doctors – perhaps because one needs relatively less knowledge to succeed in maths).
On the other hand, if competition is fierce, and performance does not greatly depend on being in one's physical prime (as is the case in tennis), the ten-year rule can become a 15-year rule or even a 20-year rule, which is the direction performers of classical music seem to be moving.
So, the first rule of talent is that whatever the field is, and no matter how smart or talented you are, you still need quite some years of hard work to get to the top of your chosen field. However, that begs the question: if only ten years of effort are required to excel in a certain field, why aren't there more people excelling? Why isn't the world rife with Einstein-class physicists and Rembrandt-eclipsing painters? Must we not conclude that the real talents have a certain gift that allows them to soar to great heights while the rest of us is still plodding along, even after ten, fifteen or twenty years? Actually, the answer seems to be 'no', and that is what I intend to talk about next time.
zaterdag 27 maart 2010
woensdag 24 maart 2010
'Integrated science': a better way of teaching science?
Summary: Princeton University currently offers a special course programme for undergraduates: integrated science. Would this be a good idea to stimulate scientific talent, or is it just a marketing ploy?
Quite some time ago, one of my former students pointed me towards a website of Princeton university, http://www.princeton.edu/integratedscience/ . His question to me, as beginning expert on science talent development, was what I thought of such a programme.
While this question may sound simple, it actually goes quite deep, and it is only now (with a lot more reading and thinking under my belt) that I'd venture to give an answer. But before that, I should probably explain what this 'integrated science' is all about.
'Integrated science' is an undergraduate programme at Princeton University, consisting of a number of related courses which cover some mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology as well as teaching students how to apply for example computer programs to science problems. Its aim seems to be to give students a broad yet solid science background, as well as preparing them for the sciences of the future.
For the students, integrated science would seem to offer multiple advantages.
First of all, integrated science may be less 'scary' to students than traditional monodisciplines such as offered at Dutch universities. Many students, when leaving highschool, are rather uncertain what discipline to pursue; it is a weighty decision, and despite open days at the universities students have often no idea what they get themselves into. This leads to large numbers of students abandoning their studies within the first year, or switching studies (only 20% of Dutch students get their BSc or BA in three years). Other students try to prevent burning bridges by following studies that are 'generally useful', like economics, management sciences, psychology or law. Natural science is generally considered too specialist, and therefore too scary to choose. By creating a course such as integrated science that students can choose while feeling that they can still go any direction they want (so not necessarily being condemned to a life of 'stuffy' labwork), the Princeton faculty makes it more attractive to choose science. And since it is, in my opinion, very good if more people have at least a decent understanding of science, and some people who may not think themselves to be much of a scientist to discover the joy of science, I can only applaud integrated science for that.
The second reason that I think integrated science may be useful has to do with the American system. While many European systems (such as the Dutch system) only allow students to choose from one of the many monodisciplines, the US system generally allows students to pick and choose what courses to follow. However, the freedom this offers is not without its price, for at least some students apparently wind up with a hodgepodge of courses that doesn't make them very marketable at all (as the Avenue-Q song goes, “What do you do with a B.A. in English?”). Having a solid course with a certificate may ensure that Princeton students don't shoot themselves in the foot (too much) and are better prepared for a career.
However, there may have been another undercurrent in my former student's question, and it may be well to discuss it here, since this, after all, aims to be a science talent blog. That question is: would integrated science make people better scientists than traditional (European) monodisciplinary studies?
The cop-out answer would be that we can only know for sure in twenty years (which is scientifically speaking true). However, I think we can make some decent predictions based on history.
Briefly, if one looks at the careers of famous scientists (such as Darwin, Einstein, Newton), most of them seem to have been very monodisciplinary. That does not mean that they did not have hobbies (Einstein played the violin and loved sailing), neither does it mean that they never read books outside their field (Darwin read about geology, as well as Malthus' book on economics and population growth). However, their main field was the subject of almost all their exertions. Even people who exhausted their university's courses in multiple fields (like Linus Pauling did) quickly specialized in one area. Globally, if one trusts Simonton's conclusions in his book “Origins of Genius”, there are basically two kinds of creative breakthroughs. The first and most common kind is by people who have thoroughly mastered a specific field over many years (such as Charles Darwin). The second kind is usually a once-in-a-lifetime spark of brilliance of someone doing work in one field (and having reached a decent level there) switching to another field; but then the multidisciplinarity could be considered more 'serial', stacking one field on top of another, instead of truly combining them. Creativity researchers have also found that most breakthroughs are a combination of deep domain-specific knowledge obtained by many years of intensive studies in a particular field and general heuristics that everyone possesses (see for example Weisberg's paper in the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance). In short: if multidisciplinarity does make a great scientist, it is not readily apparent from history.
Of course, this is just history, and people could justly accuse me of not taking into account that in the future areas will pop up that combine multiple traditional fields. However, that has been happening for over a hundred years already – take for example biochemistry. Biochemistry slowly came into being during the 19th century – but not by people who had elaborate chemistry and biology background, but by chemists who were curious enough to investigate biological processes. In general, even authorities in 'new fields' commonly just start as specialists in one close field, who'discover' the adjacent field during their PhD or postdoc and make it their speciality. For example, one of the most well-known Dutch bioinformaticists started out as an 'ordinary' biochemist who discovered the possibilities of the computer, and one of my own former supervisors, a computational chemist, started out as an regular organic chemist who did an internship with a professor who was just discovering the possibilities of computer calculations for chemistry. In brief: it would be reasonable to expect that even the leaders of the new scientific areas of the future start out as good monodisciplinarists today, even though they probably would be monodisciplinarists with some curiosity and an open mind about developments outside the traditional confines of their field.
It IS of course possible that a specially combined programme such as integrated science would outperform traditional multidisciplinary science, or even monodisciplinary science. At the moment, though, based on what I know, this seems rather unlikely, as our knowledge of education is still so shaky that attempts to let students generalize beyond the specific knowledge taught in courses is generally doomed to failure; and integrated science may not be much more effective than any other 'multidisciplinary' university programme. It will probably teach students some tricks that they may be able to reproduce, but deep understanding and subsequent innovative thinking ('far transfer', as it's called in the training lingo) may be outside of the capabilities of even Nobel-prize-possessing faculty to just 'teach in the course'; students can probably only develop that during long subsequent self-study and specialisation.
This somewhat bleak conclusion, however, does not mean that interdisciplinary science is useless. If it dispels the fears that many young people have about being or becoming a scientist, if it helps young people to get a solid education to get a job (multidisciplinarity, though a bit awkward in academia, is often appreciated in industry as there one needs to collaborate to a much greater extent with people with different backgrounds), it is probably a valuable addition to the Princeton curriculum. And, as the young talented mathematicians and reseach neurologists in Bloom's study ('Developing Talent in Young People') have shown: it does not really matter if one tries out diverse areas during their bachelor studies; sooner or later they found 'their field', and their passion for it made them excel in it. 'Integrated science' may be a counterproductive (un)specialisation for a PhD-level young scientist. However, for freshmen, it may serve as an attractive springboard to eventually help them find the field they'll love.
Quite some time ago, one of my former students pointed me towards a website of Princeton university, http://www.princeton.edu/integratedscience/ . His question to me, as beginning expert on science talent development, was what I thought of such a programme.
While this question may sound simple, it actually goes quite deep, and it is only now (with a lot more reading and thinking under my belt) that I'd venture to give an answer. But before that, I should probably explain what this 'integrated science' is all about.
'Integrated science' is an undergraduate programme at Princeton University, consisting of a number of related courses which cover some mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology as well as teaching students how to apply for example computer programs to science problems. Its aim seems to be to give students a broad yet solid science background, as well as preparing them for the sciences of the future.
For the students, integrated science would seem to offer multiple advantages.
First of all, integrated science may be less 'scary' to students than traditional monodisciplines such as offered at Dutch universities. Many students, when leaving highschool, are rather uncertain what discipline to pursue; it is a weighty decision, and despite open days at the universities students have often no idea what they get themselves into. This leads to large numbers of students abandoning their studies within the first year, or switching studies (only 20% of Dutch students get their BSc or BA in three years). Other students try to prevent burning bridges by following studies that are 'generally useful', like economics, management sciences, psychology or law. Natural science is generally considered too specialist, and therefore too scary to choose. By creating a course such as integrated science that students can choose while feeling that they can still go any direction they want (so not necessarily being condemned to a life of 'stuffy' labwork), the Princeton faculty makes it more attractive to choose science. And since it is, in my opinion, very good if more people have at least a decent understanding of science, and some people who may not think themselves to be much of a scientist to discover the joy of science, I can only applaud integrated science for that.
The second reason that I think integrated science may be useful has to do with the American system. While many European systems (such as the Dutch system) only allow students to choose from one of the many monodisciplines, the US system generally allows students to pick and choose what courses to follow. However, the freedom this offers is not without its price, for at least some students apparently wind up with a hodgepodge of courses that doesn't make them very marketable at all (as the Avenue-Q song goes, “What do you do with a B.A. in English?”). Having a solid course with a certificate may ensure that Princeton students don't shoot themselves in the foot (too much) and are better prepared for a career.
However, there may have been another undercurrent in my former student's question, and it may be well to discuss it here, since this, after all, aims to be a science talent blog. That question is: would integrated science make people better scientists than traditional (European) monodisciplinary studies?
The cop-out answer would be that we can only know for sure in twenty years (which is scientifically speaking true). However, I think we can make some decent predictions based on history.
Briefly, if one looks at the careers of famous scientists (such as Darwin, Einstein, Newton), most of them seem to have been very monodisciplinary. That does not mean that they did not have hobbies (Einstein played the violin and loved sailing), neither does it mean that they never read books outside their field (Darwin read about geology, as well as Malthus' book on economics and population growth). However, their main field was the subject of almost all their exertions. Even people who exhausted their university's courses in multiple fields (like Linus Pauling did) quickly specialized in one area. Globally, if one trusts Simonton's conclusions in his book “Origins of Genius”, there are basically two kinds of creative breakthroughs. The first and most common kind is by people who have thoroughly mastered a specific field over many years (such as Charles Darwin). The second kind is usually a once-in-a-lifetime spark of brilliance of someone doing work in one field (and having reached a decent level there) switching to another field; but then the multidisciplinarity could be considered more 'serial', stacking one field on top of another, instead of truly combining them. Creativity researchers have also found that most breakthroughs are a combination of deep domain-specific knowledge obtained by many years of intensive studies in a particular field and general heuristics that everyone possesses (see for example Weisberg's paper in the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance). In short: if multidisciplinarity does make a great scientist, it is not readily apparent from history.
Of course, this is just history, and people could justly accuse me of not taking into account that in the future areas will pop up that combine multiple traditional fields. However, that has been happening for over a hundred years already – take for example biochemistry. Biochemistry slowly came into being during the 19th century – but not by people who had elaborate chemistry and biology background, but by chemists who were curious enough to investigate biological processes. In general, even authorities in 'new fields' commonly just start as specialists in one close field, who'discover' the adjacent field during their PhD or postdoc and make it their speciality. For example, one of the most well-known Dutch bioinformaticists started out as an 'ordinary' biochemist who discovered the possibilities of the computer, and one of my own former supervisors, a computational chemist, started out as an regular organic chemist who did an internship with a professor who was just discovering the possibilities of computer calculations for chemistry. In brief: it would be reasonable to expect that even the leaders of the new scientific areas of the future start out as good monodisciplinarists today, even though they probably would be monodisciplinarists with some curiosity and an open mind about developments outside the traditional confines of their field.
It IS of course possible that a specially combined programme such as integrated science would outperform traditional multidisciplinary science, or even monodisciplinary science. At the moment, though, based on what I know, this seems rather unlikely, as our knowledge of education is still so shaky that attempts to let students generalize beyond the specific knowledge taught in courses is generally doomed to failure; and integrated science may not be much more effective than any other 'multidisciplinary' university programme. It will probably teach students some tricks that they may be able to reproduce, but deep understanding and subsequent innovative thinking ('far transfer', as it's called in the training lingo) may be outside of the capabilities of even Nobel-prize-possessing faculty to just 'teach in the course'; students can probably only develop that during long subsequent self-study and specialisation.
This somewhat bleak conclusion, however, does not mean that interdisciplinary science is useless. If it dispels the fears that many young people have about being or becoming a scientist, if it helps young people to get a solid education to get a job (multidisciplinarity, though a bit awkward in academia, is often appreciated in industry as there one needs to collaborate to a much greater extent with people with different backgrounds), it is probably a valuable addition to the Princeton curriculum. And, as the young talented mathematicians and reseach neurologists in Bloom's study ('Developing Talent in Young People') have shown: it does not really matter if one tries out diverse areas during their bachelor studies; sooner or later they found 'their field', and their passion for it made them excel in it. 'Integrated science' may be a counterproductive (un)specialisation for a PhD-level young scientist. However, for freshmen, it may serve as an attractive springboard to eventually help them find the field they'll love.
zondag 21 maart 2010
Book review: Mindset – the new psychology of success (Carol Dweck)
Summary: Stanford Professor writes about her research on how people's beliefs about ability and the effects of training influence their success. People who think that their intelligence and ability are fixed consider each failure as a sign that they are inherently incompetent and unloveable, making them stressed, defensive, and challenge-avoiding. People with a growth-mindset, who see ability as a result of training, tend not to get discouraged as easily and often get better results in the long run.
There's an old adage that one should never judge a book by its cover. Of the many books I have read in my life, this would be the book to which that is probably most applicable (barring my misprint of The Baron of Munchhausen with the Don Quichote cover). Words like "the new psychology of success" reek of a loud-mouth semi-literate author who has read one or two books on popular psychology and is now marketing 'scientifically sound' workshops. In reality though, the book is written by a prominent researcher (who is indeed an actual psychologist) who summarizes and popularizes the scientific research of herself and her group.
Though the book has over 240 pages, this is probably a sort of minimum required by the publisher, since the core idea is actually quite compact: if people believe that their results are the sole consequence of their instrinsic, unalterable, genetic endowment they are generally less motivated to learn, and succumb more easily to stress or depression. People who, however, believe that their abilities are the result of learning and experience, are much more likely to learn and to endure adversity without too many ill emotional effects.
While this sounds rather common-sense-like, the beauty of professor Dweck's book is in how it carefully uses both biographical data and scientific research to strengthen the reader's understanding of the true implications of this finding. After you've read 'Mindset', you will understand much better why John McEnroe was famous for his tantrums (he had a very fixed mindset, a tennis loss meant that he was inherently worthless), as well as why a four-star chef like Bernard Loiseau committed suicide. You'll learn that Chinese students who think that intelligence is unalterable don't follow remedial English courses, but also that American medical students who believe in innate ability flunk chemistry much more often than students who consider early failure rather as a sign that they haven't worked hard enough or that they should try other learning strategies. You'll also learn some things that are counterintuitive, such that you should never praise children for being smart or talented.
The subtleties of praise, for example, are neatly illustrated by one of Dweck's core experiments, in which she divided preschoolers in two groups, both of which had to solve puzzles. After a certain time had expired, the children had to report how many puzzles they had solved. They then got praised by the experimenter. The children from the first group were praised with sentences like "You got seven out of ten! You must be very smart!", the children from the second group however heard "Seven out of ten! You must have worked very hard. You can be proud of yourself."
Of course, the real experiment began only then.
After being praised, the students were asked whether they'd like to solve another set of puzzles, and were allowed to choose either puzzles which were as difficult as the first set, or puzzles with a greater difficulty level. What did you think the kids chose? Most of the children praised for their intelligence chose the 'standard' puzzles, the children being praised for working hard chose the more difficult ones.
In reality, all children got the more difficult puzzles (after all, one should never trust an experimental psychologist), which made the 'clever' children break down and burst out in tears – suddenly they were not smart anymore. In contrast, the 'hard workers' thoroughly enjoyed themselves. When finally a third set of puzzles were given, of the same difficulty as the first set, the 'intelligent' children performed worse, the hard workers in contrast had improved.
Explaining one's successes and failures on the basis of work and experience may therefore be a much more sensible strategy than clinging to concepts of innate ability. It is sad that people like Bernard Loiseau and many Chinese top students at elite universities have ended their own lives as a response to their self-perceived too-low ability, and almost as sad that many other people are giving up activities or not challenging themselves (which would make them grow) because they believe they can't change their skills. So, while the book's title may indeed contain far too much hot air, and the book is definitely at least 100 pages thicker than it should have been, I think that every parent and teacher should know or learn its core principles by heart, and teach them to those they want to prepare for life. One's mindset is unlikely to be the only component of success, but managing it well may nevertheless allow one to achieve a higher performance, and definitely do it with a lot less stress, and much more joy.
There's an old adage that one should never judge a book by its cover. Of the many books I have read in my life, this would be the book to which that is probably most applicable (barring my misprint of The Baron of Munchhausen with the Don Quichote cover). Words like "the new psychology of success" reek of a loud-mouth semi-literate author who has read one or two books on popular psychology and is now marketing 'scientifically sound' workshops. In reality though, the book is written by a prominent researcher (who is indeed an actual psychologist) who summarizes and popularizes the scientific research of herself and her group.
Though the book has over 240 pages, this is probably a sort of minimum required by the publisher, since the core idea is actually quite compact: if people believe that their results are the sole consequence of their instrinsic, unalterable, genetic endowment they are generally less motivated to learn, and succumb more easily to stress or depression. People who, however, believe that their abilities are the result of learning and experience, are much more likely to learn and to endure adversity without too many ill emotional effects.
While this sounds rather common-sense-like, the beauty of professor Dweck's book is in how it carefully uses both biographical data and scientific research to strengthen the reader's understanding of the true implications of this finding. After you've read 'Mindset', you will understand much better why John McEnroe was famous for his tantrums (he had a very fixed mindset, a tennis loss meant that he was inherently worthless), as well as why a four-star chef like Bernard Loiseau committed suicide. You'll learn that Chinese students who think that intelligence is unalterable don't follow remedial English courses, but also that American medical students who believe in innate ability flunk chemistry much more often than students who consider early failure rather as a sign that they haven't worked hard enough or that they should try other learning strategies. You'll also learn some things that are counterintuitive, such that you should never praise children for being smart or talented.
The subtleties of praise, for example, are neatly illustrated by one of Dweck's core experiments, in which she divided preschoolers in two groups, both of which had to solve puzzles. After a certain time had expired, the children had to report how many puzzles they had solved. They then got praised by the experimenter. The children from the first group were praised with sentences like "You got seven out of ten! You must be very smart!", the children from the second group however heard "Seven out of ten! You must have worked very hard. You can be proud of yourself."
Of course, the real experiment began only then.
After being praised, the students were asked whether they'd like to solve another set of puzzles, and were allowed to choose either puzzles which were as difficult as the first set, or puzzles with a greater difficulty level. What did you think the kids chose? Most of the children praised for their intelligence chose the 'standard' puzzles, the children being praised for working hard chose the more difficult ones.
In reality, all children got the more difficult puzzles (after all, one should never trust an experimental psychologist), which made the 'clever' children break down and burst out in tears – suddenly they were not smart anymore. In contrast, the 'hard workers' thoroughly enjoyed themselves. When finally a third set of puzzles were given, of the same difficulty as the first set, the 'intelligent' children performed worse, the hard workers in contrast had improved.
Explaining one's successes and failures on the basis of work and experience may therefore be a much more sensible strategy than clinging to concepts of innate ability. It is sad that people like Bernard Loiseau and many Chinese top students at elite universities have ended their own lives as a response to their self-perceived too-low ability, and almost as sad that many other people are giving up activities or not challenging themselves (which would make them grow) because they believe they can't change their skills. So, while the book's title may indeed contain far too much hot air, and the book is definitely at least 100 pages thicker than it should have been, I think that every parent and teacher should know or learn its core principles by heart, and teach them to those they want to prepare for life. One's mindset is unlikely to be the only component of success, but managing it well may nevertheless allow one to achieve a higher performance, and definitely do it with a lot less stress, and much more joy.
dinsdag 16 maart 2010
The start of the journey
((Note: this is the first version of my blog, it's a 'startup' until it moves to its definite site; I'm only writing in it now for giving myself something more fun as well as more productive to do than leveling my WoW characters))
Tells about: my own history, and why I started investigating science talent and scientific excellence.
When I was about ten years old, on Sunday evenings my father read stories to me and my sister. But those were not stories about dragons or giants, talking animals or wondrous lands; he read the biographies of chemists, from the irascible Paracelsus ("you, who call yourself doctors, are a failed bunch of patented donkeys, who have bought your degrees and consider it a crime if your patients disagree with you”) to the quiet Marie Curie, from the reclusive Cavendish to the politically skillful Lavoisier. That book was the 1931 Dutch version of Bernard Jaffe's 'Crucibles: The Story of Chemistry from Ancient Alchemy to Nuclear Fission', which was, at that time, really following chemistry from ancient history to the 'present', as Marie Curie was still alive and doing research as the book was being printed.
My father admired those scientists, who pierced the veil of creation. But on me perhaps, the effect was yet greater: I dreamt of becoming a truly great chemist. That I too, would one day make great discoveries.
Fast forward to one year ago. Like many other students of chemistry, clever or dull, idealistic or realistic, I had to admit that despite my dreams as a youngster, and despite my excellent results as a student (for example, I did win the Dutch National Chemistry Olympiad) my skill in and enthusiasm for actual chemical research was not at the level necessary to obtain a tenured position at a university, let alone become the greatest chemist of the 21st century. Of course, this was not really a pleasant conclusion for me, however, in the end I accepted that I could never become great in something I did not enjoy (doing cheminformatics research and writing papers) and that, if there was a God or Fate or whatever, its purposes for me may not be as clear as it seemed when first hearing about the adventures of the great chemists of the past.
In a normal case, people get realistic, life goes on, and the dream is stored in a dusty chest in one's emotional attic, in the hope of never having to be confronted with it again. And such it seemed to be the fate of my dream as well, to be forgotten in my attempts to start leading a normal, well-adjusted life.
Sometimes, however, Fate has a strange sense of humor.
As I said, I didn't very much like doing chemoinformatics research. However, I loved supervising and teaching and encouraging students (must be the influence of my mother, who is a great teacher). So I decided to try out teaching, for which the most obvious choice was teaching at a highschool (simply because Dutch highschools have a chronic shortage of teachers, finding a job would be easy, and would even be valuable experience if one ever wanted to teach at colleges and such – quite some university teachers have started as highschool teachers). As I was aware that people were drawing comparisons between teaching at Dutch highschools and Hell (and listed the comparative advantages of being suspended in pools of boiling sulfur versus teaching Dutch highschool classes) I decided to be careful and try an internship first. This internship turned out to be at a very special highschool – namely, one which had special classes to stimulate scientific talent.
Of course, I grew enthousiastic about the possibilities; would it really be possible to teach children to become excellent scientists? But after some further questioning, I realized that the group of uninterested youngsters that had just been apathetically listening to the chemistry lesson was the class of 'enthousiastic, talented young people interested in science'. Clearly, if there were a process to stimulate love and skill in science, the school had not quite perfected it yet.
For my internship report (which required me to choose a subject to elaborate upon) I investigated the history of the science classes, and what the teachers did to stimulate science. I also found out that the lessons and science programme was not based on any kind of research on stimulating scientific excellence (perhaps the research did not exist), but on common sense. However, common sense was apparently not working out very well in this case. So the only way (if it were possible at all!) to make science classes work would be to not rely on common sense, but to take the long and arduous way of trying to find out scientifically what happens in the growth of young scientists, and in which respects excellent scientists differ from mediocre ones.
I will not say that I have all the answers yet. This blog is literally a work in progress, to discuss books, journal articles, newspaper clippings or even things I encounter in my various activities in daily life. Its primary purpose is to share ideas and exchange knowledge with my friends, my former students, and even some family members who have asked to keep updated, even if they are not Dutch nor living in the Netherlands. In the end, I hope it will become a small community for information exchange; as I am just one person, and I can only read that much, and even I will sometimes require a fresh perspective of someone else who looks as the same data as I do, and sees new ways to explain phenomena. In the end, this is something that an individual cannot do alone (I am, for example, greatly indebted to authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Coyle, but also to scientists like Dean Keith Simonton and K. Anders Ericsson and many more). And ultimately, I do not think that 'excellence' or 'success' is something that should just be about oneself (tempting as that goal is). Discovering things we enjoy, and trying to excel in at least some of them, may bring joy in our lives, and benefit the rest of the world.
Tells about: my own history, and why I started investigating science talent and scientific excellence.
When I was about ten years old, on Sunday evenings my father read stories to me and my sister. But those were not stories about dragons or giants, talking animals or wondrous lands; he read the biographies of chemists, from the irascible Paracelsus ("you, who call yourself doctors, are a failed bunch of patented donkeys, who have bought your degrees and consider it a crime if your patients disagree with you”) to the quiet Marie Curie, from the reclusive Cavendish to the politically skillful Lavoisier. That book was the 1931 Dutch version of Bernard Jaffe's 'Crucibles: The Story of Chemistry from Ancient Alchemy to Nuclear Fission', which was, at that time, really following chemistry from ancient history to the 'present', as Marie Curie was still alive and doing research as the book was being printed.
My father admired those scientists, who pierced the veil of creation. But on me perhaps, the effect was yet greater: I dreamt of becoming a truly great chemist. That I too, would one day make great discoveries.
Fast forward to one year ago. Like many other students of chemistry, clever or dull, idealistic or realistic, I had to admit that despite my dreams as a youngster, and despite my excellent results as a student (for example, I did win the Dutch National Chemistry Olympiad) my skill in and enthusiasm for actual chemical research was not at the level necessary to obtain a tenured position at a university, let alone become the greatest chemist of the 21st century. Of course, this was not really a pleasant conclusion for me, however, in the end I accepted that I could never become great in something I did not enjoy (doing cheminformatics research and writing papers) and that, if there was a God or Fate or whatever, its purposes for me may not be as clear as it seemed when first hearing about the adventures of the great chemists of the past.
In a normal case, people get realistic, life goes on, and the dream is stored in a dusty chest in one's emotional attic, in the hope of never having to be confronted with it again. And such it seemed to be the fate of my dream as well, to be forgotten in my attempts to start leading a normal, well-adjusted life.
Sometimes, however, Fate has a strange sense of humor.
As I said, I didn't very much like doing chemoinformatics research. However, I loved supervising and teaching and encouraging students (must be the influence of my mother, who is a great teacher). So I decided to try out teaching, for which the most obvious choice was teaching at a highschool (simply because Dutch highschools have a chronic shortage of teachers, finding a job would be easy, and would even be valuable experience if one ever wanted to teach at colleges and such – quite some university teachers have started as highschool teachers). As I was aware that people were drawing comparisons between teaching at Dutch highschools and Hell (and listed the comparative advantages of being suspended in pools of boiling sulfur versus teaching Dutch highschool classes) I decided to be careful and try an internship first. This internship turned out to be at a very special highschool – namely, one which had special classes to stimulate scientific talent.
Of course, I grew enthousiastic about the possibilities; would it really be possible to teach children to become excellent scientists? But after some further questioning, I realized that the group of uninterested youngsters that had just been apathetically listening to the chemistry lesson was the class of 'enthousiastic, talented young people interested in science'. Clearly, if there were a process to stimulate love and skill in science, the school had not quite perfected it yet.
For my internship report (which required me to choose a subject to elaborate upon) I investigated the history of the science classes, and what the teachers did to stimulate science. I also found out that the lessons and science programme was not based on any kind of research on stimulating scientific excellence (perhaps the research did not exist), but on common sense. However, common sense was apparently not working out very well in this case. So the only way (if it were possible at all!) to make science classes work would be to not rely on common sense, but to take the long and arduous way of trying to find out scientifically what happens in the growth of young scientists, and in which respects excellent scientists differ from mediocre ones.
I will not say that I have all the answers yet. This blog is literally a work in progress, to discuss books, journal articles, newspaper clippings or even things I encounter in my various activities in daily life. Its primary purpose is to share ideas and exchange knowledge with my friends, my former students, and even some family members who have asked to keep updated, even if they are not Dutch nor living in the Netherlands. In the end, I hope it will become a small community for information exchange; as I am just one person, and I can only read that much, and even I will sometimes require a fresh perspective of someone else who looks as the same data as I do, and sees new ways to explain phenomena. In the end, this is something that an individual cannot do alone (I am, for example, greatly indebted to authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Coyle, but also to scientists like Dean Keith Simonton and K. Anders Ericsson and many more). And ultimately, I do not think that 'excellence' or 'success' is something that should just be about oneself (tempting as that goal is). Discovering things we enjoy, and trying to excel in at least some of them, may bring joy in our lives, and benefit the rest of the world.
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