The Myth of the Lone Genius

Today, the Romantic genius can be seen everywhere. Consider some typical dorm room posters — Freud with his cigar, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the pulpit, Picasso looking wide-eyed at the camera, Einstein sticking out his tongue. These posters often carry a poignant epigraph — “Imagination is more important than knowledge” — but the real message lies in the solitary pose. In fact, none of these men were alone in the garrets of their minds. Freud developed psychoanalysis ...

 Mathematics Should be Taught Like Art

Imagine you had to take an art class in which you were taught how to paint a fence or a wall, but you were never shown the paintings of the great masters, and you weren't even told that such paintings existed. Pretty soon you'd be asking, why study art? That's absurd, of course, but it's surprisingly close to the way we teach children mathematics. In elementary and middle school and even into high school, we hide math's great masterpieces from students' view. The arithmetic, algebraic equati...

 Teach Science Appreciation

When you study art, nobody expects you to become Picasso, but you’re taught how to appreciate Picasso: What goes into making great art? What motivates the artist? Why is it important? We don’t teach science that way. We teach science as if everybody’s going to practice it. Why can’t we teach science so students understand what the scientific method is, who the great scientists were, what motivated them, the important role that science plays in society, and what critical thinking is?