Abstract
As I began to analyze the 26 surveys that form the basis for this report on people influenced by Paul F. Brandwein (mostly his former high-school biology students), I found that our original purpose—to try to discover from the surveys we have gathered whether Paul’s theory about what might turn gifted students toward science makes sense—has produced some striking but not always consistent results.
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Notes
- 1.
This project would not have been possible without the generous contributions of my colleagues Richard Lewontin, James P. Friend, and the late Walter G. Rosen, all of whom were Paul’s students at Forest Hills High School a half-century ago. Deeply grateful acknowledgment for the help on this section proffered by my surviving collaborators James P. Friend and Richard Lewontin. In spite of their best efforts, mistakes no doubt survive. They are mine alone.
- 2.
Although the original experimental group was not selected with an eye to finding future educators, given his own work as a teacher, teacher of teachers, and textbook writer, Paul would surely have been gratified to find that 12 of them had headed in that direction.
- 3.
This statement I offer not only anecdotally (based on my own and others’ memories of adolescence) but also with reference to many psychological analyses, such as those by Goldberg, Evans, and Hartman (2001), Chu (2005), and Swenson and Strough (2008). Of course, the phenomenon has also been treated fictionally, best in my experience in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye (1989), which also powerfully takes up the emotional toll involved in not belonging to the group of choice.
- 4.
Editor’s note: A number of Paul’s former students besides Friend remembered variations on this piece of advice. When Paul quoted it to me, he added these questions as introduction: “How do we know it? How well do we know it? …”
- 5.
Stryer was interested to learn that he shared this quality with Paul, who needed but 5 hours a night.
- 6.
Stryer’s textbook Biochemistry is widely used. Its some million copies reached many students worldwide in six editions over about a third of a century. Said Stryer, “It contributed to our understanding of how vision begins.” Stryer is sole author of the first four editions; in the last two he is the third author, joined by Jeremy M. Berg and John L. Tymoczko. A seventh edition is planned.
- 7.
Because of the difficulty of verifying the respondents’ many mentors’ names, specialties, and locations, I am listing almost none of them here by name.
- 8.
Editor’s note: Paul was also friendly with Barbara Wolff Searle and Robert Paul Wolff’s father, chair of the biology department where Paul first worked. Both contributed to this volume, Searle, a survey as well as an essay in Part I, Wolff, a survey. Although both fell under Paul’s influence, neither became a scientist.
- 9.
Cassell went, however, on to note “how few of the superior medical students [he taught] went on to realize their potential. Mostly they have been crippled by emotional difficulties, vanity, family problems, desire to be famous, and failure to work hard enough. Maybe also, by the social desire to be like others.”
- 10.
She wrote that “my teachers, both in high school and college [in the 1950s], always encouraged me and never raised any question that I could not pursue a career because I was female. It was not until the emergence of the women’s movement in the 1970s that I realized that this was somewhat unusual.”
- 11.
(See “Close Encounters, Lasting Effects.”)
- 12.
Wolff’s interactions with Paul are explored fully in the essay by his sister, Barbara Wolff Searle, in this volume.
- 13.
See her essay in Part I.
- 14.
In each case, the missing respondent simply skipped the question.
- 15.
Paul’s rebellious stance during his teaching days was in ironic contrast to the censorship he had to face when he went into publishing. See Lewontin’s criticism of Paul’s compromise on evolution in this essay.
- 16.
Robert Paul Wolff, also a biology student of Paul’s, became a professor of philosophy and literature. His contributions are discussed in the preceding section of this essay.
- 17.
Searle and Wolff’s mother was employed as the managing editor of Child Study Magazine (working her way up from her start as a secretary).
References
Atwood, Margaret. (1989). Cat’s eye. New York: Doubleday.
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Brandwein, Paul F. (1962). Beginnings in developing an art of investigation. In Jerome Metzner, Evelyn Morholt, Anne Roe, and Walter G. Rosen (Eds.), Teaching high school biology: A guide to working with potential biologists (pp. 43–60) [Biological Sciences Curriculum Study Bulletin No. 2] (Report No. SE00088). Washington, DC: American Institute of Biological Sciences. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED011002).
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Fort, D.C. (2010). Remembrances from More than a Half-Century Back: The Surveys. In: One Legacy of Paul F. Brandwein. Classics in Science Education, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2528-9_24
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