Readers weigh in on how to teach physics

Heras replies: Cameron Reed suggests that at the PhD level, a physics student will have worked lots of standard undergraduate problems and can finally acquire “a sense of the nitty-gritty that underpins the insights of great creative minds.” I disagree. Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, and Lev Landau, for example, did not need a PhD to acquire that sense. Each published his first paper as an undergraduate.

Intuition in physics is, for Reed, a matter of “practice, practice, practice.” Again, I disagree. Intuition is the key to, for example, imagining a new sport, inventing a new language, or composing a new symphony. To reach any of those goals, practice is necessary but not sufficient. I believe intuition triggers creativity, which is characterized by a crisis occurring when one imagines a plausible idea that seems inconsistent with previously established ideas (see my essay, “Individualism: The legacy of great physicists ,” Physics Today online, 25 October 2013). One needs a passionate desire to solve such a crisis.

Philip Stahl clearly describes the current role traditional exams play in the formation of a physicist. Unfortunately, mastery of content is often taught at the expense of free inquiry and creative thinking. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, “The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”

Stahl claims that “to modify the didactic structure in favor of creative learning wouldn’t accomplish the goals of physics departments.” I think those goals should be critically reviewed. For undergraduate students, physics departments should be shelters for creativity and not solely examination factories. Regarding Feynman’s Physics X course, Stahl asks, “What physics department today could even remotely entertain such a course? . . . It would require a radical rethinking of physics pedagogy.” Precisely! After more than five decades of traditional physics teaching, I say it is time for physics departments to make a place for creative teaching.

I was invited by Physics Today’s editor to write “on how you are being taught physics and—more important—how you would prefer to be taught physics.” I took the challenge as an exercise of academic integrity. I received positive comments from outstanding physicists such as Freeman Dyson, Frank Wilczek, and Eugene Parker. In particular, Dyson gave me the following advice: “I agree with you that the time spent in formal class-room lectures and course-work is mostly wasted. You don’t need all that stuff to do science. . . . My advice to you is to skip the classes as much as the system allows, and get to work on a real problem. When you work on a real problem, you quickly find out what you really need to know.”

Most of my professors were uncomfortable with my essay. Some said that I was an atypical student and that their traditional teaching had worked well so far. Unfortunately, I can say from experience that “atypical” students face many difficulties in traditional physics departments. Despite having published six papers (see www.ricardoheras.com ), my institution has denied me financial support to finish my undergraduate studies. Tradition is indeed strong in my department! But as Mark Twain wrote in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, “Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.”