Read Martin Luther King and The Montgomery Story: The Influential 1957 Civil Rights Comic Book

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Education, History, Politics | January 20th, 2014

MLKComic

From the para­noid fun­da­men­tal­ist tracts of Jack Chick, to Ronald McDon­ald pro­mot­ing scout­ing, to an upcom­ing graph­ic nov­el explain­ing the sci­ence of cli­mate change, comics and graph­ic nov­els have long been a means of both pros­e­ly­tiz­ing and inform­ing, con­dens­ing com­plex nar­ra­tives into a digestible for­mat with broad appeal. The medi­um is so elas­tic, it can seem­ing­ly adapt itself to any kind of sto­ry, even the most sober­ly seri­ous and his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. For exam­ple, Geor­gia Con­gress­man John Lewis, vet­er­an of the Civ­il Rights move­ment, chose to tell his story—in col­lab­o­ra­tion with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell—as a graph­ic nov­el called March (mak­ing him the first law­mak­er to appear at a Com­ic-Con). Part one of three was pub­lished late last year and rose to the top of the New York Times and Wash­ing­ton Post best­seller lists. March has also become an impor­tant resource for teach­ers and librar­i­ans (down­load a free 11-page teach­ers guide from pub­lish­er Top Shelf here).

MontgomeryMethod

Lewis’ choice of medi­um may seem moti­vat­ed by the cur­rent esteem in which the form is held in schol­ar­ly and pop­u­lar cir­cles alike, but he was pri­mar­i­ly influ­enced by a much ear­li­er civ­il rights com­ic book, Mar­tin Luther King and the Mont­gomery Sto­ry. (See cov­er up top. Read it online here.) Begun just five months after Rosa Parks’ his­toric refusal, the com­ic aimed to dis­sem­i­nate the epic tale of the Mont­gomery, AL bus boy­cott through­out the South. A sec­tion called “The Mont­gomery Method” (first page above) instructs read­ers on the non­vi­o­lent resis­tance tech­niques employed by civ­il rights work­ers in Alaba­ma, with a primer on Gand­hi and his influ­ence on King. In the short video below, see NYU pro­fes­sor and King schol­ar Sylvia Rhor explain the gen­e­sis of the com­ic in the work of Alfred Has­sler, then leader of Civ­il Rights orga­ni­za­tion Fel­low­ship of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Has­sler, a lit­tle-known fig­ure who died in 1991, is now receiv­ing more recog­ni­tion through sim­i­lar means. He him­self recent­ly became the sub­ject of a graph­ic nov­el project (and now doc­u­men­tary) called The Secret of the 5 Pow­ers about his work with Bud­dhist peace activists Thich Nhat Hanh and Sis­ter Chan Khong dur­ing the Viet­nam War.

As Rhor notes above, the King com­ic has had tremen­dous influ­ence, not only in the past, and not only on Rep. Lewis in the present. In 2003–2004, The Mont­gomery Sto­ry was trans­lat­ed into Ara­bic, and Egypt­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies dur­ing the Arab Spring found inspi­ra­tion in the com­ic book that “turned Mar­tin Luther King into a super­hero”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

200,000 Mar­tin Luther King Papers Go Online

MLK’s Last Days and Final Speech

Nichelle Nichols Tells Neil deGrasse Tyson How Mar­tin Luther King Con­vinced Her to Stay on Star Trek

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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“Lol My Thesis” Showcases Painfully Hilarious Attempts to Sum up Years of Academic Work in One Sentence

in Comedy, Education | January 9th, 2014

ThesisOrigin

Image from Ph.D. Comics

A true fact about the the­sis stage of an advanced degree: What­ev­er the aca­d­e­m­ic field, whether writ­ing a fifty page bachelor’s or master’s the­sis or 250 plus page doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion, at some point, you will need to win­now your argu­ment down to an abstract sum­ma­ry of a cou­ple suc­cinct para­graphs. Then, one inevitably finds—when rid­ing ele­va­tors with col­leagues and men­tors, talk­ing to rel­a­tives over hol­i­day din­ners, jus­ti­fy­ing one’s exis­tence to friends and acquaintances—that the whole damned thing needs to some­how reduce to one intel­li­gi­ble sen­tence or two. It’s all any­one has the patience for, hon­est­ly, and it saves you the trou­ble of try­ing to recon­struct com­plex argu­ments for peo­ple who won’t under­stand or care about them and who gen­er­al­ly only asked out of polite­ness any­way.

But how, how, to cram years of research, agony, tur­moil, crush­ing fail­ure and soar­ing epiphany into bite-sized con­ver­sa­tion­al nuggets with­out gross over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion to the point of tau­to­log­i­cal absur­di­ty? Can it even be done?! The blog “lol my the­sis,” start­ed last year by a Har­vard senior study­ing Human Devel­op­men­tal and Regen­er­a­tive Biol­o­gy, sug­gests that it can, but not with­out hilar­i­ous results. Part of an explod­ing genre of aca­d­e­m­ic par­o­dy (and pro­cras­ti­na­tion) sites, lol my the­sis proud­ly ven­tures forth in its mis­sion of “sum­ming up years of work in one sen­tence” with open sub­mis­sions from cur­rent stu­dents. Many of the sub­mis­sions are from the sci­ences, and many from under­grad­u­ate the­ses, but a fair num­ber also come from human­i­ties and post-grad­u­ate stud­ies. Take, for exam­ple, the fol­low­ing sub­mis­sion from an MFA Cre­ative Non­fic­tion stu­dent at Emer­son Col­lege, which direct­ly address­es the intend­ed audi­ence:

“A col­lec­tion of non­fic­tion essays, which means they’re writ­ten about real peo­ple and events, mom. Remem­ber all those times you accused me of not lis­ten­ing to the things you said?”

A pas­sive aggres­sive exam­ple that most of us who’ve been through the process can relate to at some lev­el. Anoth­er one that hits home is this, from a Vas­sar Polit­i­cal Sci­ence major, who dis­cov­ers too late that the argu­ment doesn’t work: “Oops: Turns out self-pub­lished poet­ry didn’t actu­al­ly affect Indi­an pol­i­tics but I’m 60 pages in, so.”

The sub­mis­sions from the sci­ences do not dis­ap­point. For exam­ple, from a Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land stu­dent of Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences: “We spent thou­sands of gov­ern­ment dol­lars to cre­ate a mouse mod­el for a dis­ease only 32 peo­ple in the world have.” And a Sci­ence Writ­ing stu­dent at M.I.T. gives us this par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive exam­ple of brevi­ty: “Wolves + humans, the ulti­mate fren­e­mies.” Not to be out­done, a Stem Cell Biol­o­gy stu­dent at Har­vard offers a grim­ly terse con­fes­sion­al: “I have killed so many fish.”

The sub­mis­sions are anony­mous, but some good sports have cho­sen to include links to their the­ses, endear­ing­ly hop­ing that some­one besides their advi­sor will actu­al­ly want to read them. Most of the sub­mis­sions, how­ev­er, sim­ply com­bine two qual­i­ties every advanced stu­dent knows all too well: a well-earned feel­ing of futil­i­ty and the mor­dant wit required to keep going any­way.

More wit­ty sum­maries can be found at lol my the­sis.

Relat­ed Con­tents:

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

Grad­u­ate School Bar­bie: A New Gift Idea for The Demor­al­ized Grad Stu­dent in Your Life

The Ph.D. Grind: Philip J. Guo’s Free Mem­oir Offers An Insider’s Look at Doc­tor­al Study

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The International Children’s Digital Library Offers Free eBooks for Kids in Over 40 Languages

in Books, Education, English Language, K-12, Language Lessons | December 29th, 2013

For all of the free lit­er­a­ture and essays avail­able online, a sur­pris­ing­ly small amount is geared toward chil­dren. Even less is aimed at chil­dren who speak for­eign lan­guages.

The Inter­na­tion­al Children’s Dig­i­tal Library offers chil­dren ages 3–13 free access to the best avail­able children’s lit­er­a­ture in more than 40 lan­guages. Librar­i­ans find and dig­i­tize books pub­lished around the world and present them in their orig­i­nal lan­guages.

The site acts as a meta learn­ing tool. It is designed to be easy for chil­dren to use by themselves—by sim­ply click­ing “Read Books,” a list of favorite titles pops up—but kids can learn how to search too, by their own age, types of char­ac­ters, genre, book length, lan­guage and geo­graph­i­cal region.

The home­page fea­tures rec­om­mend­ed and pop­u­lar titles, like Tyrone the Hor­ri­ble, writ­ten in Span­ish. Where trans­la­tion rights exist, the library works with vol­un­teer trans­la­tors to pro­vide addi­tion­al lan­guage ver­sions.

The library is a project of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Maryland’s Human-Com­put­er Inter­ac­tion Lab and there is a research com­po­nent to the project. Work­ing with chil­dren in New Zealand, Hon­duras, Ger­many, and the Unit­ed States, researchers are look­ing at how chil­dren per­ceive oth­er cul­tures out­side their own.

The library’s broad­er mis­sion is to make it pos­si­ble for chil­dren all over the world to learn to use a library sys­tem and read a range of qual­i­ty lit­er­a­ture. The inter­face aims as much at inter­na­tion­al chil­dren as it does immi­grant chil­dren in Amer­i­can cities and rur­al areas.

Books are avail­able for free and with­out an account. An account, how­ev­er, allows a child to cre­ate their own book­shelf of favorites that can be shared with oth­er users. A guide for teach­ers includes a train­ing man­u­al and tips for how to use the library to teach cre­ative writ­ing, library search skills and for­eign lan­guages.

You will find the Inter­na­tion­al Children’s Dig­i­tal Library in our col­lec­tion 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More.

More dig­i­tized chil­dren’s books can be found at the Library of Con­gress.

Adults, don’t miss our oth­er col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Clas­sic Win­nie-the-Pooh Read by Author A.A. Milne in 1929

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

The Clas­sic 1956 Oscar-Win­ning Children’s Film, The Red Bal­loon

 

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On Christmas, Browse A Historical Archive of More Than 50,000 Toys

in Archives, Creativity, Education, History, Life | December 25th, 2013

paratroops in action

The Strong Nation­al Muse­um of Play, locat­ed in Rochester, NY, is a fun children’s muse­um. But the insti­tu­tion also has seri­ous research archives, stuffed with toys, games, and records of the toy indus­try. Its online col­lec­tions, which cur­rent­ly boast 55,068 objects, take a hol­i­day brows­er on a trip into a fig­u­ra­tive grandma’s attic, chock-full of the play­things peo­ple loved in the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies.

The online archives are divid­ed into four cat­e­gories: “Toys”, “Dolls”, “Games”, and “More.” Each of these four sec­tions is fur­ther sub­di­vid­ed into top­i­cal­ly-spe­cif­ic groups, cho­sen by the archivists.

The collection’s strength is also its weak­ness: there are so many toys that it can be easy to get over­whelmed. The sub­ject divi­sions are help­ful here. As some­body with an inter­est in gen­der and child­hood, I found myself fas­ci­nat­ed by the house­keep­ing toys—kids used to use ovens that were heat­ed with real coals!—and that was an easy way to nar­row down my browse.  Sub­ject group­ings for toy sol­diers, celebri­ty dolls, and board games also piqued my inter­est.

It’s fun to look around for toys from your own child­hood (I found a few), but if you’re inter­est­ed in his­to­ry, you might find the echoes of his­tor­i­cal events to be even more intrigu­ing. Late-nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry kids played with a paper doll inspired by the cir­cus celebri­ty Tom Thumb; chil­dren of the 1930s had licensed dolls of the media-sen­sa­tion Dionne Quin­tu­plets; a play­set from 1940 fea­tured grim, suit­ed-up “Para­troops in Action.”

Mou­s­ing over the thumb­nails will allow you to see the item’s name. If you see a blue “Learn More” tag, be sure to click through; that means that the item’s image will be accom­pa­nied by an inter­pre­tive his­tor­i­cal note writ­ten by the Strong’s archivists. These vary in length, and con­tain intrigu­ing tid­bits. Did you know, for exam­ple, that Hol­ly Hob­bie was a real per­son: the artist Hol­ly Ulinkas Hob­bie? Or that the famous artist Charles Dana Gib­son had a now-for­got­ten fol­low­er, Nell Brink­ley, who illus­trat­ed the flap­per era?

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @rebeccaonion. 

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Teacher Helps His Student Overcome Stuttering and Read Poetry, Using the Sound of Music

in Education, Life, Music | December 19th, 2013

Musharaf Asghar, a stu­dent at Thorn­hill Acad­e­my in north­east Eng­land, over­came an acute stam­mer when his teacher, Matthew Bur­ton, bor­rowed an idea from The King’s Speech. The teacher asked his stu­dent to put on some head­phones play­ing the music of Ben Howard, and to start recit­ing a poem called ‘The Moment.’ Sud­den­ly, for the first time, the words began to flow. All of this was cap­tured in a doc­u­men­tary series, Edu­cat­ing York­shire, that aired on the BBC. The seg­ment above con­cludes with Mushy, as he’s known, giv­ing a short talk in front of his class, at what looks like a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny. It did­n’t take long for his fel­low stu­dents to break down in tears.

Writ­ing recent­ly in The Guardian, the stu­dent recalls. “My nerves over speak­ing in assem­bly were TERRIBLE though. I did­n’t realise how big 200 peo­ple looks like. I was sweat­ing and I had a lit­tle wob­ble but even­tu­al­ly, I man­aged to get through it. I was excit­ed, if ner­vous, about the whole thing going out. But I’m real­ly hap­py and proud to be on tel­ly as I hope it gives oth­er peo­ple with a stam­mer the con­fi­dence to have a go at pub­lic speak­ing. My speech is get­ting bet­ter every week. Every­one at col­lege gives me time, but I’m get­ting quick­er any­way so they don’t miss their bus while they are lis­ten­ing to me. I still won’t be apply­ing for any call-cen­tre jobs yet though.” Find more infor­ma­tion on how music ther­a­py can help peo­ple over­come stut­ter­ing here.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

via @courosa

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View Bill Gates’ Mobile Library: The Books & Courses That Help Him Change The World

in Books, Education | December 9th, 2013

Step­ping down as Microsoft’s chief exec­u­tive offi­cer in 2000 had giv­en Bill Gates some extra time, which the auto­di­dact imme­di­ate­ly expend­ed by attempt­ing to learn… well, every­thing. Per­haps Gates threw him­self at learn­ing to make up for aban­don­ing col­lege for greater pursuits—he attend­ed Har­vard but left after two years’ study to pur­sue his pas­sion for com­put­ers. What­ev­er his rea­sons, Gates has begun to assid­u­ous­ly learn all he can about the world, and is record­ing his edu­ca­tion process for pos­ter­i­ty on his web­site, The Gates Notes. As the video above explains, Microsoft’s founder has lis­tened to hun­dreds of hours of uni­ver­si­ty lec­tures from The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny; he got hooked after lis­ten­ing to Robert Whap­les’ Mod­ern Eco­nom­ic Issues and breez­ing through Tim­o­thy Tay­lor’s Amer­i­ca and the New Glob­al Econ­o­my. His num­ber one pick? Big His­to­ry which is taught by David Chris­t­ian and, Gates says, “is still my favorite course of all. The course is so broad that it syn­the­sizes the his­to­ry of every­thing includ­ing the sci­ences into one frame­work.”

Wher­ev­er Gates trav­els, he is also eter­nal­ly accom­pa­nied by his read­ing bag. Sur­prised that the her­ald of the dig­i­tal age is pack­ing paper­backs? Don’t be. “I’m still pret­ty much an old-school print guy,” Gates writes, “because I like to jot notes in the mar­gins, but I assume I’ll move over to ebooks when anno­ta­tion fea­tures get bet­ter.”

Last week, Gates showed WIRED the con­tents of his decid­ed­ly 20th cen­tu­ry mobile library. The books, which Gates replen­ish­es at an impres­sive rate, encom­pass an admirable breadth of top­ics. As befit­ting the over­seer of the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, the major­i­ty of Gates’ read­ing con­sists of non-fic­tion (only Gary Shteyn­gart’s recent nov­el made the fic­tion cut this round). His­to­ry, psy­chol­o­gy, sci­ence, sound busi­ness coun­sel, soci­ol­o­gy, eco­nom­ics, and his­to­ry all make up the dizzy­ing array of Gates’ every­day read­ing. Here is a selec­tion from WIRED’s par­tial list, includ­ing Gates’ own com­ments on the impor­tance of each choice:

-Feynman’s Tips on Physics by Richard Feyn­man– A short com­pan­ion book to Richard Feynman’s clas­sic Lec­tures on Physics. Always worth­while to return to the feet of the mas­ter.

-Super Sad True Love Sto­ry: A Nov­el by Gary Shteyn­gart– I don’t read a lot of fic­tion, but I thought this was an inter­est­ing study of the moral impli­ca­tions of tech­nol­o­gy. Will tech­nol­o­gy con­tribute to everyone’s well-being or just make peo­ple more nar­cis­sis­tic?

-The Car­toon Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics by Grady Klein– Bought this to use with one of my kids. Help­ful in explain­ing a com­pli­cat­ed sub­ject to a teenag­er.

-The Path Between the Seas: The Cre­ation of the Pana­ma Canal by David McCul­lough – I read this to pre­pare for a fam­i­ly vaca­tion to Pana­ma. It’s pure McCul­lough: epic dra­ma, polit­i­cal intrigue, heart­break­ing defeats, and even­tu­al tri­umph.

-The Bet­ter Angels of Our Nature: Why Vio­lence Has Declined by Steven Pinker– One of the most impor­tant books I’ve read. Steven Pinker demon­strates how the world evolved to be far less vio­lent. Coun­ter­in­tu­itive, if you watch the news, but true.

We’ve also used the trusty Con­trol + Scroll func­tion to zoom in and name a few addi­tion­al titles:

An Uncer­tain Glo­ry: India and its Con­tra­dic­tions by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen

Engi­neers of Vic­to­ry: The Prob­lem Solvers Who Turned The Tide in The Sec­ond World War by Paul Kennedy

The Price of Inequal­i­ty: How Today’s Divid­ed Soci­ety Endan­gers Our Future by Joseph Stiglitz

Why Does Col­lege Cost So Much? By Robert Archibald and David Feld­man

Mon­do Agnel­li: Fiat, Chrysler, and the Pow­er of a Dynasty by Jen­nifer Clark

How Chil­dren Suc­ceed: Grit, Curios­i­ty, and the Hid­den Pow­er of Char­ac­ter by Paul Tough

The One World School­house: Edu­ca­tion Reimag­ined by Salman Khan

Far From The Tree by Andrew Solomon

For the orig­i­nal list, head over to WIRED. For more of Gates’ com­men­tary, check out his site, The Gates Notes, here. You can also con­tin­ue your self-edu­ca­tion by vis­it­ing our lists of Free Online Cours­es, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Lan­guage Lessons, Free Text­books, and Free MOOCs.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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“Soda/Pop/Coke,” A Creative Visual Remix of Harvard’s Famous 2003 Survey of American Dialects

in Education, English Language, Film, Harvard | November 27th, 2013

Tomor­row, friends and rel­a­tives from far-flung cor­ners of the coun­try will gath­er as they do this time each year—stuff them­selves sil­ly, trim Christ­mas trees, watch foot­ball, online shop, etc. And depend­ing on how far-flung those assem­bled are, there may be in cer­tain homes some clan­des­tine chuck­ling over a cer­tain guest’s request for “pop” instead of soda, or the oth­er way around, or some oth­er fun­ny way of say­ing things. Because in this gar­gan­tu­an expanse we call the Unit­ed States, we’ve got a wealth of region­al variants—some dif­fer­ences sub­tle, some quite notice­able (though with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly the degree of socioe­co­nom­ic bag­gage as the UK, I’m con­vinced).

I recall, for instance, mov­ing to New York City over a decade ago and grap­pling for the next sev­er­al years with New York­ers’ insis­tence on say­ing “stand­ing on line” instead of “in line.” As “online” acquired an entire­ly new mean­ing, this lin­guis­tic odd­i­ty took on an even more con­fus­ing dimen­sion for out­siders. And hav­ing grown up hear­ing the sec­ond per­son plur­al as rough­ly half “you guy”s and half “y’all,”s I’ve been amused by the New York “youse.” As we learn from The Atlantic’s “Soda/Pop/Coke” above, these dif­fer­ences in word­ing cor­re­spond to region­al dif­fer­ences in pro­nun­ci­a­tion of words like “bag,” “pecan,” and “coupon.”

Inform­ing us that “at least 10 dis­tinct dialects of Eng­lish are spo­ken in the Unit­ed States,” “Soda/Pop/Coke” draws on the 2003 Har­vard Dialect Sur­vey, con­duct­ed by lin­guist Bert Vaux. As the film’s inter­view­ers ask callers Vaux’s sur­vey ques­tions, their region­al affil­i­a­tions appear graph­i­cal­ly on a map of the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States, based on grad­u­ate stu­dent Joshua Katz’s heat map­ping of Vaux’s work.  You can see the more than one hun­dred vari­ants Vaux’s sur­vey mea­sures here, and The Atlantic points us to U Penn’s dense (and spe­cial­ized) Nation­al Map of the Region­al Dialects of Amer­i­can Eng­lish. It’s a com­pli­cat­ed and rar­efied sci­ence, lin­guis­tics, but we’re all at least ama­teur soci­ol­o­gists of lan­guage (some­times bad ones) as we sort and size each oth­er up—or com­plete­ly mis­hear each other—based on com­plete­ly uncon­scious choic­es in word­ing and pro­nun­ci­a­tion.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Do You Drink Soda, Pop or Soft Drinks?: 122 Heatmaps Visu­al­ize How Peo­ple Talk in Amer­i­ca

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Learn 46 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The “Pursuit of Ignorance” Drives All Science: Watch Neuroscientist Stuart Firestein’s Engaging New TED Talk

in Education, Philosophy, Science, TED Talks | November 26th, 2013

Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Stu­art Firestein, the chair of Colum­bia University’s Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences depart­ment, rejects  any metaphor that likens the goal of sci­ence to com­plet­ing a puz­zle, peel­ing an onion, or peek­ing beneath the sur­face to view an ice­berg in its entire­ty.

Such com­par­isons sug­gest a future in which all of our ques­tions will be answered. In Dr. Firestein’s view, every answer can and should cre­ate a whole new set of ques­tions, an opin­ion pre­vi­ous­ly voiced by play­wright George Bernard Shaw and philoso­pher Immanuel Kant.

A more apt metaphor might be an end­less cycle of chick­ens and eggs. Or, as Dr. Firestein posits in his high­ly enter­tain­ing, 18-minute TED talk above, a chal­lenge on par with find­ing a black cat in a dark room that may con­tain no cats what­so­ev­er.

Accord­ing to Firestein, by the time we reach adult­hood, 90% of us will have lost our inter­est in sci­ence. Young chil­dren are like­ly to expe­ri­ence the sub­ject as some­thing jol­ly, hands-on, and adven­tur­ous. As we grow old­er, a del­uge of facts often ends up trump­ing the fun. Prin­ci­ples of Neur­al Sci­ence, a required text for Firestein’s under­grad­u­ate Cel­lu­lar and Mol­e­c­u­lar Neu­ro­science course weighs twice as much as the aver­age human brain.

The major­i­ty of the gen­er­al pub­lic may feel sci­ence is best left to the experts, but Firestein is quick to point out that when he and his col­leagues are relax­ing with post-work beers, the con­ver­sa­tion is fueled by the stuff that they don’t know.

Hence the “pur­suit of igno­rance,” the title of his talk.

Giv­en the edu­ca­tion­al con­text, his choice of word­ing could cause a knee-jerk response. He takes it to mean nei­ther stu­pid­i­ty, nor “cal­low indif­fer­ence,” but rather the “thor­ough­ly con­scious” igno­rance that James Clerk Maxwell, the father of mod­ern physics, dubbed the pre­lude to all sci­en­tif­ic advance­ment.

I bet the 19th-cen­tu­ry physi­cist would have shared Firestein’s dis­may at the test-based approach so preva­lent in today’s schools.

The igno­rance-embrac­ing reboot he pro­pos­es at the end of his talk is as rad­i­cal as it is fun­ny.

For more of Stu­art Firestein’s thoughts on igno­rance check out the descrip­tion for his Colum­bia course on Igno­rance and his book, Igno­rance: How It Dri­ves Sci­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

 

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day recent­ly direct­ed 16 home­school­ers in Yeast Nation, the world’s first bio-his­tor­i­cal musi­cal.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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