Teaching without a Clicker

Once upon a time, not so very long ago in the evolution of education, teachers had to teach without benefit of overhead projection systems, power point, Smart Boards, and streaming video.

The best did it with passion for their discipline, with mastery of the material, with the strength of their delivery, and with the power of their ideas.

Dr. Marion Kayhart was one of the best.  She still is.

At a bio-symposium held in her honor on November 18, the biology professor who is remembered with awe (and terror) by legions of Cedar Crest alumnae, treated her former students and colleagues and current faculty and students to a 30-minute discourse on the process and import of science.  Science graduates from all over the country had traveled to campus for the opportunity to hear her speak.

Remembering her insistence on punctuality, they did not linger over coffee at the continental breakfast preceding her talk.  They took their seats in Oberkotter Hall at least five minutes before the lecture was to begin, nervously glancing at the clock to make sure they weren’t late.

Trustee Karen Long Wagner ’83, a nuclear medicine major who is now director of oncology and a medical physicist and radiation safety officer at St. Joseph Medical Center in Reading, opened the meeting on time.  “Today’s speaker requires no introduction,” she said.

For the benefit of members of the audience who weren’t fortunate enough to be at Cedar Crest during Dr. Kayhart’s era, Karen explained that the former chair of the Biology Department was “a fine, concise and organized teacher, an exacting scientist, and a challenging examiner” who made an “indelible impact” on science and non-science majors alike during her 39 years on the Cedar Crest faculty.

That soon became apparent.

For those who remember Dr. Kayhart’s lectures, let the record show that on this occasion she entered this lecture hall from the right rather than from the left and that she was greeted with applause that was not often heard from drowsy undergraduates at 8 a.m.

Otherwise not much had changed.  She still spoke in perfect outline form without referring to any notes.  When she mentioned blue books, her former students still got sweaty palms.  And the master lecturer still informed, inspired and provoked her listeners, holding them spellbound as she skillfully wove together references to literature, art, music, history, and pop culture in her examination of the status of science and society in 2006.

First she made her audience laugh.  “Word reached me,” she said, “that some of you felt the questions on biology tests were of the ‘Surely, you must be kidding’ variety.’”

Then she made them groan.  “During retirement, I realized that I’d missed some opportunities,” she reflected.  “This morning I would like you to think with me about some of the questions I never asked.”

Anyone who had ever taken a Kayhart exam braced herself.

“What would it take to deliberately create a new human species?” Rescuing her listeners from feelings of inadequacy, Dr. Kayhart began by giving them a road map for pondering this and other questions of this magnitude.

“First we need background.  We need to organize our thoughts,” she said, taking graduates who are now college professors and research scientists back to their student days, by adding, “assuming we have any thoughts to organize.”

There was time to smile, but not to laugh, as Dr. Kayhart drew students past and present into the evolutionary drama:

“During the last 4.2 million years several species of humans have come and gone.  Each has left remains, so we can trace, if only dimly, a story of successive human speciation.  We’re the latest, but not the last species, unless we succeed in destroying the very environment that sustains us.  As we look back, we see that new human species evolve about every 400,000 years.  Homo sapiens have been on earth for approximately 370,000 years.  We may have only 30,000 years to go.  The clock is ticking.”

Dr. Kayhart pressed forward, taking the audience with her:   “We need a wish list,” she said.   “What qualities would we want this new species to have?”  “Intelligence?  Of course. Drop dead smart.  Physical appearance?  Julia Roberts comes to mind, or perhaps George Clooney.  Then height.  The super short style has been tried, but found wanting,” the diminutive scientist deadpanned, eliciting giggles from students and colleagues who had always towered over her physically even as she dwarfed them intellectually. 

“Athletic prowess?  Enough to play short stop for the New York Yankees,” the wannabe Yankee proclaimed.  “Musical ability?  The genius of a Wynton Marsales.”

So much for visioning.  “What biotechnological methods will we need to accomplish this?,” Dr. Kayhart asked.  “We have an amazing array of tools:  all the information from the Human Genome Project, genetic testing, cloning experience, the ability to manipulate human sex cells, bioinformatics.  In your blue book, describe each of these tools and the role it will play in establishing this new species.

“You will also want to give some attention to lifespan.  Is it a design flaw that we age and die?  What would happen if we could glimpse a world in which aging and disease were not inevitable?  Why not in the very early embryo switch off the genes that trigger aging and render the embryo immortal?  It is one thing to ponder our own immortality, but quite another to envision a world in which increasing numbers of people would live indefinitely.

“It is one thing to ask whether we should increase people’s life span and then perhaps answer no.  It is quite another to decide that we should not immunize people against cancer, heart disease and dementia. Consider this dilemma in your answer.  Also think about the approaches that would be necessary to preserve human dignity and human rights in such a situation.  Take it from there when you get your blue books.”

Oh my.  There was no time to despair about the enormity of the task before Dr. Kayhart threw out two more challenges:

First:  “Write a letter to Charles Darwin.  Tell Mr. Darwin the things you think would interest him most about the turbulent journey of his ideas and the changing views of the man himself as we approach the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species and the bicentennial of his birth.” To provide guidance, Dr. Kayhart read a sample letter that an anonymous science student (with handwriting remarkably like her own) wrote to Darwin, telling him that scientists of the 21st century thought highly of his theory despite the fact that only 27% of Americans accepted it.  The letter-writer expressed amazement at that low number, noting that 75-80% of people in Europe and Japan find the theory credible.

Final task:  “With apologies to those who believe anthropomorphism is misguided, assume you are a Siberian tiger who thinks.  You are one of those ‘endless forms most beautiful’ who have passed through long planetary emergencies and who now confront the end of your world.  You are among nature’s masterpieces, but you are an endangered species.  Extinction looms.  How do you react?” 

More groans. 

Again the professor allowed the audience to struggle, but not to fail:  “You have some options.  You could get roaring mad, band together with other threatened wildlife, and destroy the humans responsible for your fate, but in moments of sober reflection, you realize that revenge is never a solution.

“You could fold your paws, bide your time, and purr ‘Whatever will be, will be,’ and decide not to get involved.  These days that is a common reaction, but not a good one for a thinking tiger.

“Instead you could collect all of the relevant facts, analyze them, and select the best course of action, realizing that in 2008 there will be a tiger summit at which concerned humans called conservationists will meet to devise strategies to save tigers.  You could say, ‘Maybe there’s a role for me.’”

The audience was with her.  They were tigers, and suddenly there was a glint in their eyes, not of hunger, but of hope.

As for the professor, her half hour was drawing to a close, and she was coming in for the educational kill.

“You remember that a distant tiger cousin in Africa told you about a sign in Cameroon that asked ‘How far in the future are you thinking?  If you are thinking about one year, plant a seed.  If you are thinking about ten years, plant a tree.  If you are thinking about the next 100 years and beyond, educate the people.

“’But what shall I teach them,’ you ask? 

“Teach them that an ecosystem never exists for the benefit of just one of its species.  Teach them that humans are going to have to come to grips with the reality of their intrusion on a very fragile planet.  Teach them that they will need to rethink the scope of their moral obligations. 

“Humans today have great moral concern for living persons who are close to them, for their family and friends, but the concept of a moral community of concern should probably be extended to include people who are distant spatially and temporally – to people around the world, to generations yet unborn.  I would suggest that as a tiger you should convince them that moral concern should be extended to include plants and animals.  Biodiversity is a treasure that took centuries to create, and that could easily be destroyed.”

The room was so still, you couldn’t even hear the tigers breathing.

“Today’s presentations are a reflection of the Cedar Crest tradition of asking hard questions,” Dr. Kayhart concluded.  “We get excited about things we know, but it is the things we don’t know that drive our research.

“James Clerk Maxwell (the 19th century physicist credited with expanding understanding of electromagnetic fields) described ‘thoroughly conscious ignorance’ as ‘the prelude to every real advance in science.’  ‘Thoroughly conscious ignorance!’  What a magnificent notion!

“The quest for answering hard questions takes us into the night sky where we search for others who share our universe.  It takes us into the tropical rain forest among the creatures of legend.  It takes us into the commotion of the living cell with its exquisite choreography of molecules.

Let us all praise hard questions.”

Indeed. 

And let us all praise the professors of legend who pose those questions and who provide us with the tools and the motivation to seek the answers.

Heidi Bright Butler ‘72

Back to Transforming Lives