Most students have heard the adage that “Knowledge is Power.” There is much truth to this, but there is another aspect of power that is equally or more important than knowledge: Responsibility. Many of you may be thinking about giving up reading the rest of this because you have heard it all before about how lecturers and professors think students are irresponsible children and everything was better when they were students and there has been nothing but decline ever since. However, this is not my point at all.
Consider the following. There is no shortage of ignorant people who have been given (or have taken) responsibility. These people can have great power. There is also no shortage of highly intelligent and knowledgeable people who have no power. So, while there is no question that knowledge can be empowering, this is not the whole picture.
What is the point? You can be empowered by people giving you the opportunity to be responsible. You are disempowered when you are not given responsibility. The latter can be a confusing point. You may be given a position that appears to be responsible but unless you are also given the opportunity to carry out those responsibilities it is only form, not substance.
Where is the educational philosophy in all of this? Part of creating responsible adults is giving them responsibility. I tend to give students a lot of project work. There are many reasons for this but among them is giving the students the responsibility to decide what to do the project on, how to do the project, and carry out the work. There is “oversight” of projects which limits the amount of responsibility the students have, but certainly there is more responsibility assigned to the student than in typical lab exercises.
These specifics are not the main point I want to make. Relative to the opportunities I had to carry responsibility as an undergraduate, the students here are severely disempowered. Since, I went through a very different educational system I can not say that there has been an enormous decline since I was in school, only that where I was educated the philosophy of giving students responsibility was very different. For example, as a graduate student I was given a stockroom key. This is something that as an academic staff member I do not have. But that is minor compared to a more dramatic example.
As an undergraduate, I had the benefit of a unique opportunity. As I go through life the uniqueness of that opportunity grows and this note is really a tribute to an educational genius named Dr. Arthur Scott. I never met him. In fact he died while I was an undergraduate, having retired some years earlier. What did Dr. Scott do? He convinced his administration AND government regulatory bodies that undergraduates could operate and run a research nuclear reactor. I am sure he did other things, but the legacy of this person has had a longstanding impact on my life. If you ever read my resume you will see that I was a reactor operator, senior reactor operator, and eventually reactor supervisor. This was all while I was an undergraduate. When I graduated with my degree, I left the region and my license lapsed. I still have a certificate, which I am proud of, and it hangs on my wall.
When I was younger, I used to think of it as a great personal achievement. It certainly is something that not everyone has done, but is it greatness? Not really. The greatness was in Dr. Scott being able to conceive of undergraduate students as capable of such things. In retrospect, certainly when compared to crystallography it wasn’t the most difficult thing I ever did. The physics we were taught was relatively straightforward (I have forgotten most of it – but nothing a reasonably intelligent undergraduate can’t learn). In fact, the TRIGA reactors were engineered – according to rumor – with high school students in mind and I have no doubts that high school students could run a TRIGA if given the responsibility. Most of the operation of the reactor was about following procedures, filling in logs, and sitting around watching meters and chart recorders. Routine operation requires less skill than driving a car.
What was unique was the philosophy of giving young people responsibility. The rest was something most of my students would be capable of doing. It required a bit of effort, but then how many people wouldn’t spend an evening a week for an opportunity to learn how nuclear reactors work and do neutron activation analysis. The course ran for an academic year, for no academic credit. At the end of the year, examiners came from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and there was a written and practical exam.
The course was open to everyone. Science students are what I am sure you are thinking about, but it wasn’t just for them. Students of humanities also took part and were successfully licensed. Very unique.
Looking at my students from this perspective, I think as an institution we are deficient. While a reactor is a bit of hardware not everyone has, there are other ways we can strive to give students more responsibility. We are not doing enough for them.
