Supervising the Researcher

In the first sixteen years or more of our formal education, there is little to prepare us for the rigors of research or the demands of life in general. In lectures we are taught facts and techniques; in homework we develop skills by applying those techniques. Even in project-based courses such as those sometimes found in engineering and business curricula, the experience is relatively structured. In general, the goals are precisely defined as are the alternative paths to the solution. Although more helpful than lectures, such project-based experiences still provide an inadequate preview of the rigors of earnest research. There are courses in logic offered by the philosophy department, cognitive processes in psychology, and artificial intelligence in computer science. But they are not usually core requirements in the college curriculum. Further, even these courses generally deal with facts, figures, and straightforward deductive procedures. These analytical and deductive methods are necessary but insufficient for solving difficult problems. The most challenging problems are, by definition, not straightforward. We are not taught in school how to grope intelligently, to stumble with style. Our educational system, like society at large, discourages creative behavior which necessarily deviates from the norm. The forces of convergence, including the need for group identification and the fear of ostracism, are more numerous and powerful than those of divergence. Teachers, parents, and peers tend to encourage standardized rather than unexpected behaviors. The creative person must have a healthy dose of confidence and self-respect, since risk and creativity go hand in hand. If we learn to think effectively and address difficult problems systematically, our skills spring from personal experience rather than formal education. For our educational system teaches advanced thinking skills in spotty fashion, at best. If we learn to think effectively, it is usually a by-product rather than a keystone of the course work. Studies of 301 historical figures born since 1450 indicate the dubious impact of education on eminence. The sample included 109 leaders, ranging from the American general Philip Henry Sheridan as the most obscure to Napoleon Bonaparte as the most renowned; and 192 creators ranging from the English novelist Harriet Martineau to the French writer Voltaire.