M.W.P.Strandberg's Home Page: Top ...

The Land Lecture

This survey of the angst of undergraduate laboratory at MIT has shown that in the real world the effort forms a spectrum of scenarios from that of an experience like the Taste of Research trial that made the students Queens For Two Weeks in an active research laboratory, through a setting where laboratory setups are manipulated for an hour by the students, to the extreme case in which the student engages in grunt labor in an active laboratory, washing petri dishes, say. It is this breadth that makes the opinions published after the piece on UROP in the 5 October The Tech lack focus. In the 8 October The Tech, 5:1, Robert J. Ragno writes a Guest Editorial, UROP Troubling. He concentrates on the possible exploitation of student labor under the stipend mode of the program. And letters in the 13 October issue by Benjamin Ho, (http://www-tech.mit.edu/V119/N49/Benjamin_H.49l.html) and the 15 October issue by James K. Kuchar, (http://www-tech.mit.edu/V119/N50/James_K_Ku.50l.html), reject Ragno's suggestion that there is a possible exploitation of student labor.

And where does Edwin H. Land's A.D. Little Memorial Lecture, Generation of Greatness, fit in this succession of events? (http://web.mit.edu/mwpstr/www/land.htm)

The plate he sets before his audience is full of unpalatable items. I find little sustenance there. To say that what follows the lecture in time is causally the result of it defies etiological clarity. The launch of UROP was 12 years after the lecture was delivered. One could just as well say that the great wave of electronic recording on camcorders and VCR's was inspired by Land's futile efforts to perfect instant motion pictures. That project left the operators knee-deep in the detritus evolved in the operation -- the backing on the transparent film that terminated the light path and that had to be removed after development. In the Introduction to the text of the lecture in the published version, the gentle Acting President, J.A. Stratton, says only that ...While there may be practical limitations to the feasibility of some of Dr. Land's proposals it behooves all of us, educators and laymen alike, to embrace his concern for the full development of the creative powers which are inherent in each and every individual. But what could have been said is that, even at that time, 1957, the Lecture is a male chauvinist, sexist, pipe dream. It describes the entering a male student being taken under the wing of a male mentor, Usher is Land's term, who fosters and nurtures and spiritually bonds with a group of ten freshmen. They develop a program of individual research for each student that is uniquely his own research, and which will vindicate the student's own measure of his own creativity and that of his mentor. The nurturing is to be a continuing activity of the mentor for these ten freshmen. The projects will be like the study of the theory of Von Frisch that bees navigate using polarized light from the sky. The suggestion to the entering freshman is that he find by what mechanism the bee analyzes the polarized light. The description of the mentor that would be sufficient to this task is that he have a warm feeling for teaching, and that behind him are the heady days when the stream of his professional career was coursing through rocky rapids and he is now drifting on quiet, broad river where he can afford to relax a bit. The usher will follow the men through the first two years, molding their education so that they become sophisticated in the world of literature and the arts by individually designing programs of study for each man. In return the mentor would be well paid and exempt from committee duty, Land suggests.

And for the introductory courses in chemistry, physics and mathematics, they should not be courses in which the chemistry genius or the physics genius or the mathematics genius flourish, but courses in which chemists and mathematicians, say, acquire a deep feeling for physics. The brilliant presentation of the most precisely delineated ideas, Land says, takes time, patience, and talent. To accomplish this within the given academic limitations of time, patience, and talent, Land proposes filming the great lecturers in action, and using these movies to replace live lectures. Land admit he has not spent a life in the university, but his friends have and he sees the flaws of the existing system.

The 1956-57 President's Report by President Killian says that the Land Lecture has stimulated conversation about the education process. The 1958-59 report by President Stratton says the Land Lecture has given rise to ...a variety of interesting projects that are being discussed by our faculty, all with a common aim of bringing our undergraduates into association with the senior members of our academic community. It is my sincere hope that these ideas will bear fruit. But President Howard Johnson had taken over the reins of the Presidency before anything happened. Why? It should be clear to those familiar with the MIT community. But to be specific let me list a few reasons.

• The model of the MIT student that Land used was not only offensive at the time but totally inaccurate. MIT had women and minorities in 1957. The Tackling Tech student handbook was first published in 1948. The 1951 edition lists The Association of Women Students with headquarters in the Cheney Room. There was a one percent population of women students then and MIT was still learning the proper gender-neutral nouns and adjectives. As a consequence, advising was not built on a spiritual link between aged men and young men. The 1960 pamphlet on the undergraduate thesis calls it a man-sized job on page 1. The prize goes, however, to Dean Bowditch's pamphlet of 1951 entitled, To All Men Teaching Freshmen. In the absence of an advisor system, it offers sources of information about the Class of 1955 M.I.T. obviously has a heavy responsibility to these men and their parents. The information was to be useful in spotting or referring to the Dean those men having difficulties in courses. (http://web.mit.edu/mwpstr/www/candle.htm)
• In no way is it possible for a freshman to expend time developing a personal affirmation project like that of determining how bees analyze polarized light. And the faculty would not be prudent in expending the resources for the reasonably expected return.
• No educational institution is going to harness its intellectual property delivery system to movies made of last year's lectures.
• Finally, MIT started with a mandate in 1864 to accomplish the goals that can be reasonably extracted from the text of the Land Lecture anyway. If it did anything it made the faculty and administration more attentive to their MIT roots.
• The above items being said, it must also be noted that there are no good or bad teaching methods in my view. There are, however, appropriate and inappropriate processes. No doubt there are situations in which the suggestions in Land's offering would be appropriate, but MIT is not such a situation. MIT simply does not have young entering students who are eager to form warm spiritual relationships with older men who are floating quietly on the peaceful river of their career.