Einstein, the searcher

by Alexander Moszkowski

* * * * * * * *

One of the most discussed themes in matters touching school education is at the present time: "the selection of gifted pupils." It has developed into a principle that is generally recognized by the great majority, the only point of disagreement being in respect to the number that is to be selected.

The idea running through it is that derived from Darwin's theory of selection: man completes the method of selection practised by Nature. He sifts and chooses, and allows those that are more talented to come to the fore more rapidly and more decidedly; he favours their advancement and makes easy their ascent.

This principle has really always been in existence. It started with the distribution of prizes in ancient Olympia and reaches to the present-day examinations that are clearly intended as a means of selecting talents. A greater discrimination based on a systematic search for talents was reserved for our own day.

It was scarcely a matter of doubt to me what attitude Einstein would take up towards this matter. I had already heard him say hard words about the system of examinations, and knew his leaning towards allowing each mind to develop its power freely and naturally.

In effect, Einstein declared to me that he would hear nothing of a breeding of talents in a sort of sporting way. The dangers of the methods of sport would creep in and lead to results that had only the appearance of truth. From the results so far obtained it was impossible to come to a final decision about it. Yet it was conceivable that a selective process conducted along reasonable lines would in general prove of advantage in education, particularly in the respect that many a talent that would ordinarily become stunted owing to its being kept in darkness would now have an opportunity of coming to light.

This resolved itself into a talk bearing on many questions, and of which I should like to state the main issue here. It was specially intended to make clear the gambling method that Einstein repudiates, and the danger of which seems still more threatening to me than to him.

If certain pedagogues, whose creed is force, were to have their way, the "most gifted" pupils would be able, or would be compelled, to rush through school at hurricane speed, and, at an age at which their fellows were still spending weary hours at their desks, they would have to clamber to the topmost branches of the academic tree. All things are possible, and history even furnishes cases of such forced marches. Luther's friend Melanchthon qualified at the age of thirteen to enter the University of Heidelberg, and at the age of seventeen he became a professor at Tübingen, where he gave lectures on the most difficult problems of philosophy, as well on the Roman and Greek writers of classical antiquity. This single instance need only be generalized, and we have the new ideal rising up before our astonished gaze: a race of professorial striplings whose upper lips are scarcely darkened with the down of youth! It is a mere matter of making an early discovery of the most gifted, and then raising the scaffolding up which the precocious know-alls can climb as easily as possible.

[Interposed query: Where are these discoverers of talent, and how do they prove their own talent? There was a good opportunity for them in a case which I must here mention. Einstein told me in another connexion that, as early as 1907, that is, when he was still very young in years, he had not only succeeded in successfully representing the Principle of Equivalence, one of the main supports of the General Principle of Relativity, but had even published it; yet it made not the slightest impression on the learned world. No one suspected the far-reaching consequences, and no one pointed out this flaming up of a new talent of the highest order. And just as this was able to remain concealed from the learned Areopagus of the world at that time, so a similar lack of understanding may easily be possible on a smaller scale at school. We know actually that among the recognized great men of science, there were many who did only moderately well at school; as, for example, Humphry Davy, Robert Mayer, Justus Liebig, and many others. Wilhelm Ostwald goes so far as to affirm: "Boys ordained to be discoverers later in life have, almost without exception, been bad at school! It is just the most gifted young people who have resisted most strongly the form of intellectual development prescribed by the school! Schools never cease to show themselves to be the bitter, unrelenting enemies of genius!"—in spite of all efforts at selection which have always been in vogue in the guise of advancement into higher forms.]

But the new mode of selection is intended to prevent mistakes and oversights. Is this possible? Do not the traces of previous attempts inspire distrust? There was once a very ideal selection that had to stand the test of one of the most eminent bodies in existence, the French Academy. Its duty was to discover geniuses on an incomparably higher plane. It, however, repudiated or overlooked: Molière, Descartes, Pascal, Diderot, the two Rousseaus, Beaumarchais, Balzac, Béranger, the Goncourts, Daudet, Emile Zola, and many other extremely gifted people, whom it should really have been able to find.