On Colleagues and Clients

Q .N EVERY campus of every large university there is a school, or perhaps a department, of education. The scientists hear that it is there, but they do not visit it very often. They are trying to teach the young and are realizing that the job is too hard for them. But while they go on with feelings of partial success, there is, nearby, this company of specialists in the philosophy and technique of the teaching process, and they make no use of them. When physicists are having difficulty with a chemistry problem, they go to the chemists; if they get beyond their depth in mathematics, they know mathematicians who will throw them a rope. Physicists in my home department, on one occasion, were broad-minded enough to seek aid in the department of classical languages, and they came home with their problem solved. In that conference, the word klystron was invented. But when we are wondering how to educate, we do not go to the educationists. Do we feel that they do not have the answers, or do we avoid them so as not to incur guilt by association? I cannot dismiss this odd boycott, as some apparently can, by declaring that go per cent of the educationists are fools led by the Io per cent who are smart rogues. I know some educationists who seem to be as intelligent as physicists and as honest as mathematicians. They do not exalt pedagogical know-how above factual know-what. They do not take pride in producing highly trained but ignorant teachers. They worry about some of the same educational problems that bother the

Mathematics education · Medical education · Physicist · Physics · Theoretical physics · Medicine · Psychology · Science Education and Pedagogy · Various Chemistry Research Topics