WORTH THINKING ABOUT: THE VIRTUE OF MISBEHAVIOR
Military people are well-know for wanting to see "bright lines and
shiny objects"; should teachers have the same kind of tastes? Scholar
Jacques Barzun doesn't think so. Here are two of his comments on the
subject, from his 1964 book, "Science: The Glorious Entertainment."
"Seeing is of course indispensable to learning, particularly in
science, which is of the eye. Visual aids therefore have a place in the
laboratory. And most students, not being future scientists, will learn
more from good films of important experiments than from their own fumbling
attempts. But sometimes they must fumble too, and have a teacher who
fumbles on occasion, and thinks all the time he is in class. One learns
not by a photographic copying of things shown, but by an internal drama
imitative of the action witnessed. When the instructor gropes for a word,
corrects himself, interjects a comment or an analogy not directly called
for, he gives a spectacle of man thinking which no slick film or televised
show will provide."
And here, in case you need a reason to do a little misbehaving, Barzun
provides a good one
"Far from behaving (or should one say behavioring?) with the regular
intelligibility of a clock, the bent of the living and of man in particular
is to MISbehave, in all senses of the word - from developing allergies,
which make poison out of delicacies, to committing crimes which, as in
saints and statesman, can later seem the highest wisdom. It is even proved
by research that man must have his ration of dreaming, that is, of
irregular and inaccurate thinking. These facts of experience require that
any science of the regularities of behavior be always qualified and
admonished by another discipline, a learned lore of misbehavior."
Barzun's "Science: The Glorious Entertainment" is out of print. Among his
many other works is his interesting critique of academia: "The American
University: How It Runs, Where It's Going."