Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Educating Albert and STEM

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Educating Albert and STEM:

Educating Albert and STEM

Speaking of STEM schools -- and isn't everybody -- I was talking STEM recently with my old UIC prof and colleague,Bill Schubert, who turned me on to Walter Isaacson'sbiography of Albert Einstein.



It seems Einstein, who was brilliant in math and science, could not pass his exams in French, literature, politics and several other subjects. His troubles seemed to stem (no pun intended) from his conflicts with his teachers. Albert had an "allergic reaction" to any and all forms of dogma and authority.



 He especially rebelled against the authoritarian approach to education that prevailed in the German schools he attended. How many kids do you know like that?

Einstein had, in the words of  Isaacson, “a deep suspicion of authority in general and of educational authority in particular...This contempt for authority did not endear him to the German ‘lieutenants’ who taught him at his school. As a result, one of his teachers proclaimed that his insolence made him unwelcome in class. When Einstein insisted that he had committed no offense, the teacher replied, ‘Yes, that is true, but you sit there in the back row and smile, and your mere presence here spoils the respect of the class for me.’” 

Pestallozi

Eventually, Einstein left (or was expelled from) that school and eventually attended a preparatory school in Aarau, Switzerland.

“It was a perfect school for Einstein. The teaching was based on the philosophy of a Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Educating Albert and STEM: