Editor's letter: Education's fourth "R"

last updated 8 January 2015

If everyone agreed on how best to foster ethical and useful lives, philosophy would have run its course with Aristotle 2,300 years ago. The latest proof that we don’t agree—and probably never will—comes in the fight brewing across the nation over the Obama administration’s Common Core education standards (see Talking points). Kids in the classroom will be only dimly aware, if at all, of the political issues and pedagogical theories the adults are sputtering and carping about. And let’s hope it stays that way. Because in the end, what could matter most to their education, I suspect, is a compelling science experiment, or a class discussion in which they surprise themselves by making an articulate point, or a book that opens up some new vista.

You never quite know what will inspire that moment of awakening. My high school physics teacher, Mr. Quayle, got grief for taped-together eyeglass frames, but many of us first grasped the wonder of science while listening to him explain why sparks flew from his Van der Graaff generator. Pakistani-born writer Mohsin Hamid (see The Book List) tells us it wasn’t from Dante or James Joyce that he learned “what literature is capable of,” but from Charlotte’s Web and the sci-fi best seller Dune. Obviously, those sparks are just the beginning; my lab mates who went on to careers in the sciences had to hit the books hard, and Hamid immersed himself in all kinds of literature and experience before becoming a brilliant novelist. But whatever theory of education we adhere to—and new ones emerge with wearying regularity—we’ll be doing the future a big favor if it leaves a little room for random inspiration.