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Creative Transformations of Ethical Challenges

Vera John-Steiner and Reuben Hersh, University of New Mexico (USA)

There is a widely held assumption that the appeal of novelty, the rewards of discovery,

and the beauty of artistic expressions provide their own rewards, and constitute a claim for the

human capacity for goodness. In celebrating these contributions to our lives, we seldom

examine the possibility that such a creative contribution can also pose a serious threat to our

very survival. In this chapter we explore the ethics of choices that accompanied creative

contributions in three different historical settings.

The creativity researcher Howard Gruber recognized the tension between “task-

oriented” and, what he called, “world-oriented” motivational dynamics (Wallace & Gruber,

1989, pp. 284-285). Engagement in creative activities can be isolating from the social world that

surrounds creative people because of the intensity with which such individuals pursue their

passion. But that very intensity that is so central to writing, painting, or scientific work can also

make these individuals sensitive to the great challenges we face as social beings. Gruber wrote

of the claims the world makes upon us, whether as looming environmental disasters, incessant

wars, inequality, or pervasive fatal illness. As these challenges surround us, meeting them

requires individual and social resources that go beyond habitual behaviors. They require

empathy, vision, courage, and a view of the self interdependent with others.

In examining the motivational sources of creative work, Gruber also mentioned ego-

orientation or extrinsic motivation. It “refers to an attitude toward work that is motivated by

desire for rewards not inherent in the task itself, rewards such as recognition, prestige, prizes,

money, privileges and power. Task orientation, or intrinsic motivation, refers to an attitude

toward work that is motivated by the intrinsic nature or demand-character of the task itself”

(Wallace & Gruber, 1989, p. 284). Creative people who are driven by the satisfaction achieved

through rewards for creative work are seldom oriented toward using their talents to improve

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their world. They can form temporary alliances with more visionary individuals, who experience

the pain of others in a very personal and disturbing way. The latter are gratified when, through

empathy, they can reach beyond the confines of their individual concerns. There is an

interesting tension in people who find in their work an intense and pleasurable absorption,

what Csikszentmihalyi (1990) has called “flow,” but who can also devote themselves to causes

beyond those that provide them creative gratification. Gruber called these individuals “cases of

‘creative altruism,’ in which a person displays extraordinary moral responsibility, devoting a

significant portion of time and energy to some project transcending an immediate need and

experience” (Wallace & Gruber, 1989, p. 285).

We present three case studies of individuals who demonstrate exemplary creative

altruism, and examine the ways in which they respond to challenging circumstances. One

example of creative altruism was the physicist Leo Szilard, who confronted one of the most

difficult ethical choices faced by any individual in the last century. Another such individual was

the painter Friedl Dicker-Brandeis who taught art to children in the 1940s in the Terezín

concentration camp. Our third example is Clarence Stephens, an African American mathematics

professor whose approach to teaching difficult subject matter was to transform creatively a

traditional rigid approach to a humanistic one.

Leo Szilard

Morality and creativity have usually been considered independent domains, with little

attention being paid to the moral implications of a creative innovation. But history has taught

us otherwise; we are all still living with the consequences of moral choices made by great,

creatively innovative scientists in the early and mid-twentieth century. In the following case

study, we present the moral and ethical challenges faced by Leo Szilard, a man determined to

confront the tragic consequences of his scientific discovery.

During the 1920s and 30s physics was experiencing a golden age, with major discoveries

being made in subatomic studies. This work was conducted in universities by large communities

of scientists drawn from many countries, including Berlin’s Humboldt Institute where Albert

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Einstein taught for a while. Many young scientists travelled between these centers and British

laboratories, learning of new developments through face-to-face interactions. One of these was

the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, who after years of work in different continental centers,

settled in England in 1933. It was Szilard who first conceived the possibility of a chain reaction

of nuclear fission—either to produce useful energy, or to commit extinction. He twice played a

singular and unique role with respect to the greatest threat to the survival of the human race:

the atomic bomb.

In nuclear fission, a heavy atom breaks in two when struck by a neutral elementary

particle, a neutron. (“Neutral” means having no electrical charge, neither positive nor

negative.) Some of the original mass would be converted into radiant energy, and more

neutrons would be released. Szilard was the first person to realize that in this way a nuclear

chain reaction could take place, releasing huge amounts of energy. The great release of energy

is a consequence of Einstein’s famous equation: e = m c2.

Szilard first started to think about the chain reaction problem after reading a summary

of a talk by Lord Ernest Rutherford, the eminent British physicist. Rutherford minimized the

potential importance of nuclear fission as a source of large quantities of energy. Szilard was

challenged by this prediction, and spent large amounts of time trying to come up with a

different view. He synthesized diverse research findings such as that of the chain reaction

studied by chemists including his Hungarian friend Michael Polanyi and Rutherford's own

findings of “critical mass” (Lanquette, 1992, p. 134). His process of scientific creativity

corresponded with many other documented cases (John-Steiner, 1985) where synthesis,

analogy, and intellectual dialogue are basic features of discovery.

Szilard’s insight that a nuclear bomb could be built based on the chain reaction occurred

when World War II was looming. What in 1933 must have seemed very far out and unlikely to

be realized, suddenly became a terrifying threat in 1939. In their laboratory, two German

physicists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, succeeded in splitting the nucleus of a uranium

isotope, number 235. These physicists and their laboratory belonged to Adolf Hitler’s Third

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Reich, the Nazi regime, which threatened all of Europe. The ethical dilemma is clear. It is hard

to imagine something worse than the whole world ruled by Adolf Hitler. If the atom bomb was

going to come about, it was vitally important that it should be built by the U.S. and its allies

before the Nazis could do so. The negative side was that the world would become much less

safe for the human race, once atom bombs were manufactured. But during war time, with the

dreadful fear of a Nazi victory predominant, this negative side was easy to minimalize.

This was the first of two ethical dilemmas about the atom bomb that would be faced by

Leo Szilard. He quickly decided that he must motivate the U.S. to start working to build its own

atom bomb, ahead of the Germans. He was a foreign refugee, without any power or influence.

Nevertheless, he succeeded with help from another refugee physicist who was so famous that a

letter from him could not be ignored. Albert Einstein admitted to Szilard that the idea of a

nuclear chain reaction had never occurred to him. Szilard composed a letter to President

Franklin D. Roosevelt. Einstein signed the letter, although he was an ardent pacifist. Urging

Roosevelt to use his own great discovery to create a weapon of mass destruction must have

been hard, indeed, for him to advocate. He later declared that he wished he had become a

plumber rather than a physicist.

Szilard played a critical role in informing President Roosevelt of the feasibility of building

a bomb (which became realized in the Manhattan Project). He spent the war working in the

code-named “Metallurgical Laboratory” in Chicago, under Enrico Fermi, where the first

sustained chain reaction of nuclear fission was achieved. Then the action moved to Los Alamos,

Hanford, and Oak Ridge. General Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project,

considered Szilard not only a nuisance, but a security risk. He forbade Szilard from visiting Los

Alamos, and even had him shadowed by FBI agents all through the war. Szilard tried at times to

make friends with his FBI shadows. Their reports of his comings and goings make absurd

reading today. A few years later, the war in Europe came to an end; there was no longer any

fear of a Nazi bomb. The original motivation for the whole project had vanished. But the

Japanese allies of Hitler continued to fight. Vast Russian armies were moved to the Far East, in

preparation of an invasion of Japanese-held Mongolia. Japan was trying to end the war without

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yielding an unconditional surrender. It was expected that invading Japan would cost the lives of

many American soldiers. Should the bomb be dropped on Japan? Many in the scientific

community including Einstein and Szilard opposed using “the bomb” on a civilian population,

rather than demonstrating its power by dropping it on an uninhabited island.

Great efforts had been made to keep the Manhattan Project secret, in order to maintain

a monopoly of atomic weapons for the U.S. But Szilard and other physicists knew that once an

atomic explosion took place, telling the whole world that an atomic bomb is feasible, in only a

few years the Soviet Union would also have atom bombs. What would then follow would be a

nuclear arms race--an utmost danger, an existential threat to human survival. Szilard was well

aware that this danger was, in part, his own creation. He would spend decades striving against

this danger.

Using another letter from Einstein, Szilard scheduled a meeting with Eleanor Roosevelt

for May 8, 1945. He planned to give her information that would caution President Roosevelt

about the danger of a nuclear arms race, if the A-bomb was used before an international

control agreement could be discussed with the Soviets. But on April 12, President Roosevelt

died. An attempt to meet with President Truman led instead to a May 28, 1945 meeting with

James Byrnes, who would soon become Secretary of State. But Byrnes thoroughly disagreed

with Szilard's views.

Other physicists shared Szilard’s worries, including James Franck, the Director of the

Chemistry Division of the Metallurgical Lab at the University of Chicago. Szilard was one of the

main authors of the “Franck Report” issued in June, 1945, two months before the bombing of

Hiroshima. It warned that even if the A-bomb helped save lives in this war, using it could lead

to a nuclear arms race and a possible nuclear war. Here are some of the key passages:

If no efficient international agreement is achieved, the race of nuclear armaments will

be on in earnest not later than the morning after our first demonstration of the

existence of nuclear weapons (II. Prospectives of Armaments Race, Para 9) …only lack of

mutual trust, and not lack of desire for agreement, can stand in the path of an efficient

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agreement for the prevention of nuclear warfare (III. Prospectives of Agreement, Para

1). It will be very difficult to persuade the world that a nation which was capable of

secretly preparing and suddenly releasing a weapon, as indiscriminate as the rocket

bomb and a thousand times more destructive, is to be trusted in its proclaimed desire of

having such weapons abolished by international agreement (III. Prospectives of

Agreement, Para 3). From this point of view a demonstration of the new weapon may

best be made before the eyes of representatives of all United Nations, on the desert or

a barren island (III. Prospectives of Agreement, Para 5). (The Franck Report, 1945)

The Franck Report urged the Truman administration to carry out a demonstration of the

atomic bomb rather than to use it without advance warning against a Japanese city. Secretary

of War Stimson and his advisers, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, found the Franck Report’s

recommendations unpersuasive. The bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Szilard’s worst nightmares became reality (Lanquette, 1992).

In May 1946, Szilard joined with Albert Einstein, Hans A. Bethe, and other leading

atomic scientists to form the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists. The Committee

sought to further the peaceful uses of atomic energy. It carried out extensive educational

programs in support of international control of the atomic bomb. But with the increase in

tension between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., international control of atomic weapons turned out

to be impossible. Neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. government ever seriously considered

yielding control of their atomic weapons. In 1949, the Atomic Scientists Committee became

inactive. It officially dissolved on October 10, 1951. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. piled up

thousands of atomic bombs, and intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver them. The

situation was named “mutual assured destruction” (MAD for short). This symmetry of

deterrent dominated international politics for decades, until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

To this day there remain thousands of atomic weapons, in place and ready to fly on a few

seconds’ notice.

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Szilard’s ethical commitment never wavered. His goal became to moderate or control

the atomic competition between the two great powers and prevent a nuclear war. He met with

influential American and Russian politicians and scientists, gave lectures, made proposals, and

wrote petitions. He succeeded once in spending an hour with Nikita Khruschev, the leader of

the Soviet Union. Eventually he recognized that such individual and behind-the-scenes efforts

did not succeed. To affect the policies of the U.S. government, Szilard came to understand that

it was important to engage with the political system. He proposed to establish a peace lobby

that would find promising candidates for office and then supply them with the funds necessary

to be nominated and elected. Szilard made this proposal in a speech to the Harvard Law School

Forum and repeated the speech successfully to different college audiences. In early January

1962, he drew up a trust agreement and drafted by-laws to establish the organization that

became the Council for a Livable World (CLW), to deliver “the sweet voice of reason” about

nuclear weapons to Congress, the White House, and the American public (Lanquette, 1992).

This was his second creative response to an ethical dilemma. It left a lasting legacy, an

organization that continues to this day to be one of the major lobbies for peace in Washington

D.C. CLW provides sophisticated technical and scientific information that helps Congress make

intelligent decisions about weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, chemical and biological

weapons, nuclear nonproliferation, and other national security issues. Along with its sister

organization, the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the Council has been at the

forefront of U.S. arms control and national security policy for nearly half a century.

With the end of the cold war in the 90’s, nuclear disarmament again became a live issue.

In April 2009, President Barack Obama made a speech in Prague laying out a vision of an

eventual dismantling of all nuclear weapons. In April 2010 in Prague, Mr. Obama and Dmitiri A.

Medvedev, Russia’s former president, signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, an

agreement to pare down both countries’ nuclear arsenals. The treaty, known as New Start, was

given final approval by the Senate in December 2010. Szilard’s creation, the Center for a Livable

World, will continue to play an important part in decreasing the nuclear arsenal.

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These events raise the issue of scientific “progress” and morality. In some cases difficult

choices are apparent from the very beginning of a major project, as was the case with the

nuclear bomb. But other circumstances present a complex mixture of solving one problem but

creating others, for instance in the overuse of antibiotics. As a society we seem to be energized

and enchanted by the relentlessness of scientific progress. It is hard to stop the momentum and

create an environment for considering the moral, practical, and systemic consequences of the

race for discovery. The myth of the neutrality of science, because of its use of reason and logic,

interferes with the practice of reflection where ethical issues are raised and debated.

By choosing big problems and addressing them creatively, people can find themselves in

situations of great moral uncertainty. The very powerful motivation that drives a physicist to

understand the basic processes of the universe confronted Szilard with the consequences of his

discovery, a burden from which he could never again free himself. What was exceptional about

him was that, rather than escaping or denying those implications of his discovery, he devoted a

good part of the rest of his life to seeking ethical and creative ways to reshape the

consequences.

“Through a Narrow Window” Friedl Dicker-Brandeis

The story of a young art teacher illustrates how creative endeavors can be a source of

solace at a time when one’s life is under extreme threat. The choices that Friedl Dicker-Brandeis

made when facing deportation to German concentration camps in World War II reveal a

morality of care going beyond the struggle for individual survival. Dicker-Brandeis responded to

a notification for a transport to a camp by focusing on her on her ability to share her creative

talents. The legacy of that decision is the basis for a remarkable exhibit, curated by Professor

Linney Wix of the University of New Mexico, of the paintings of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and her

students who were incarcerated in Terezín. The story of how these works were made and

survived the war is one of creativity and ethics.

Friedl Dicker was born in Vienna at the end of the 19th century. She was an only child

who lost her mother before she turned four. Little is known of her childhood, but it has been

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reported that she frequently drew in the stationery shop where her father worked. The first art

form that she studied was photography, in a city abundant in artistic activities and institutions.

Starting at age 19, she studied painting with teachers who engaged in “reform pedagogy” (Wix,

2010, p. 8). She joined one of her instructors at the newly emerging Bauhaus program that

combined art, politics, and philosophy. This influential center was situated at first in Weimar,

then in Dessau and lastly, in Berlin. (Once Hitler came to power, members of the Bauhaus

movement spread out to many non-German communities.) Dicker studied in Weimar and was

deeply influenced by the intuitive and spiritual approach of Johannes Itten and some of his

colleagues during this early visionary period of Bauhaus (1919-1923). Itten’s notion of student-

teacher relationship was of a sharing community rather than the more usual hierarchical

arrangements. He developed a key practice of the student “feeling into” the subject, form, or

material, stressing the nature of the experience. He further believed that intuition and emotion

were central to making art, without ignoring the more academic aspects of art education.

Friedl “emerged as a well-rounded artist with strong skills in handicrafts, a firm grasp on

the foundations of art, and an ability to work intuitively and emotionally within varied art

practices” (Wix, 2010, p. 12). After leaving Weimar she turned to architectural and textile

design (1923-1934). She practiced these applied art forms for a decade. Then she started to

paint again. Her work included flowers, landscapes, and portraits. Dicker-Brandeis never

settled into a single style. “Her ability to render with exquisite sensitivity the quotidian things

that brought her joy is a distinguishing feature of most of her work” (Wix, 2010, p. 13). Starting

in 1931, she taught children, art students, and kindergarten teachers interested in art

education. She also engaged in anti-fascist political activity, and experienced arrest and a

painful interrogation. During this period she explored psychological insights about herself and

the sources of her art. Her paintings included her appreciation of the physical world around her,

as well as faces of friends and loved ones. In 1936, she married Pavel Brandeis in Prague. They

lived in Eastern Bohemia. In 1942, they received a notice to report for deportation.

During the weeks that she readied herself for departure, Friedl’s creativity and ethical

commitment joined to govern her decisions. Deportees were limited to 50 kilograms of

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materials to take with them. She chose to pack art materials for children, rather than cherished

personal belongings. This choice reveals her commitment to others instead of herself. It was

governed by her deep belief that she and her students would find solace in artistic engagement,

no matter what they would confront after deportation.

Friedl and her husband Pavel were taken to Terezín concentration camp. It differed from

the other camps. The Germans used it as an exhibit, to show to the foreign press prisoners

pursuing different activities, including Friedl’s art lessons. While the public face of the camp

focused on such activities, everyone was aware that any day the inhabitants could be taken to

an extermination camp.

Once Friedl arrived at Terezín, she started to work with the art materials she had

brought with her and with additional materials she and her students could find in the camp. She

gave a lot of support to her students, and encouraged them to draw what they remembered,

and what they dreamt about. The approach to artistic work that she developed in Terezín

allowed her and her students to live imaginatively in a very narrow and terrifying world. She

achieved a delicate balance between fostering their individual self-expression and fostering

collaboration and community among “Friedl’s girls.”

Through the interdependency something comes about that in later life will play an

enormous role; that is, the work of a group becomes not the work of competing

individuals but an achievement of all of them. Through the intensive communal

effort…the group and individuals achieve the best results. Under these circumstances

the children also are inclined to cope with the difficulties of the sparse materials, to get

by with little, to help one another, and to fit themselves into the community or group.

(Dicker-Brandeis, 1943, Foster translation, p. 133)

Friedl helped her students be aware of their environment including what the barracks’

windows revealed. They used each other for portraits. They also integrated into their paintings

images from museums and art books, and scenes from their past. In some of their paintings the

children present a lost world of houses, trees, and animals - all that they had to leave behind.

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In addition to teaching them techniques, she was encouraging them to find their own artistic

expression of their many losses, transcending their captivity.

“Using art to overcome the debilitation of hunger and fear, to dispute the Nazi policy

that tried to make its victims less than human, that presented them to the world and to

themselves as weak and cowardly, is an act of resistance. The students’ sense of aliveness to

visual forms and their human bond with each other and their teacher refuted the

dehumanization” (John-Steiner in Wix, 2010, p. xii).

We can only speculate about the positive impact on Friedl of being able to use her

talents to work, to channel her own terrors by seeing how the children responded to her

teaching and the way they developed under her care. The few children who survived recalled

how the art classes helped them to deal with hunger and imprisonment, and provided

opportunities to create art themselves which their teacher shared with them. “That time when

you are concentrating on something beautiful, that’s how we forgot where we were…”

(Weissberger, 2001, personal interview).

Friedl’s ethical determination didn’t waiver, even when she was facing transportation to

death at Auschwitz. She packed more than 5000 pieces of the children’s artwork into two

suitcases and buried them. After the war, during which Friedl and many of the children

perished, the suitcases were found and turned over to the Jewish Museum in Prague.

In addition to making art, the children and youth in Terezín performed in theatre

productions and wrote poetry. These became the basis of the book and theater production “I

Never Saw another Butterfly,” a depiction of the children’s experience (Volavková, 1942).

Accompanied by music and choreography, this moving play has made it possible for many

contemporary young people to identify with the children of Terezín, most of who perished in

Auschwitz. The art exhibit, loaned from Prague, was transported to New Mexico, where many

local schools brought their students to view the paintings and to share stories about the lives of

these brave young people and their teacher.

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Friedl’s story underlines the complexity of creative endeavors. Some are born of joyous

exploration, and the love of the raw materials--colors, sounds, the rhythm of words, the beauty

of movement--and pride in completing novel projects that are significant to one’s community.

Other creative drives are the result of flight from the tragedies of life. Creative individuals and

communities reach beyond a simplified image of the world. “This is what the painter does, and

the poet, the speculative philosopher, the natural scientist, each in his own way. Into this image

and his formation he places the center of gravity of his emotional life in order to attain the

peace and serenity that he cannot find within the narrow confines of swirling, personal

experience” (Holton, 1978, pp. 231-32).

Dicker-Brandeis achieved similar “sanctuaries of sanity where making images

empowered children in their struggle to survive each day” (Wix, 2010, p. 36). Teaching, even in

ordinary circumstances, is an expansion of the self, of reaching to the inner worlds of students.

In Terezín, Friedl buttressed her own strength by transcending the threats to her life. Our next

example, Clarence Stephens, was also a teacher who could identify with the struggles of his

students. He, too, chose ethical solutions to human limitations and pain. But the circumstances

that he confronted are more representative of how ethics and creativity can impact everyday

life.

Clarence Stephens

The ethics of care in teaching mathematics was central to the passionate commitment

of Clarence Stephens to his students at SUNY Potsdam. They received patience,

encouragement, and belief in their abilities in an environment different from the usual test-

driven classroom. In March 1987, an article appeared in the American Mathematical Monthly

entitled “A Modern Fairy Tale.” It began,

Tucked away in a rural corner of North America lies a phenomenally successful

undergraduate mathematics program. Picture a typical, publicly funded Arts and

Science undergraduate institution of about 5,000 students, with separate departments

of Mathematics and Computer Science. While the total number of undergraduates has

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remained relatively fixed over the past 15 years, the number of mathematics majors has

doubled and doubled again and again to over 400 now in third and fourth years. They

don’t offer a special curriculum. It is just a standard, traditional pure mathematics

department. More than half the freshman class elect calculus, because of the

reputation of the mathematics department carried back to their high schools. And of

the less than 1000 Bachelor degrees awarded, almost 20% are in mathematics. In case

you are unaware, 1% of bachelor degrees granted in North America are in mathematics.

These students graduate with a confidence in their ability that convinces prospective

employers to hire them, at I.B.M., General Dynamics, Bell Laboratories and so on.

Do they just lower their standards? Mathematics teachers in the university

across the street [Clarkson Institute of Technology] say “no.” They see no significant

difference between their performance and that of their own students.

The students say the faculty members really care about them, care that each one

can develop to the maximum possible level. It is simply the transforming power of love,

love through encouragement, caring and the fostering of a supportive environment. By

the time they enter the senior year, many can read and learn from mathematics texts

and articles on their own. They graduate more women in mathematics than men. They

redress a lack of confidence many women feel about mathematics. In the past ten

years, almost every year the top graduating student at this institution, across all

programs, has been a woman in mathematics. (Poland, 1987, p. 293)

The architect of this innovative approach is Clarence Stephens, a mathematics educator

who encountered a contradiction familiar to every college professor of mathematics in the U.S.

Most college students avoid mathematics if they can, and suffer through it if they must. In the

standard “pre-calculus” courses (reviewing middle-school and high-school algebra and

geometry), and also in first-year calculus, retention rates are abysmal, failure rates are

astonishing. Stephens had a very rare response to this unpleasant reality. He was unwilling to

accept it. Instead, he challenged it, rejected the unquestioned assumptions behind it, and

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created a radically different college mathematics education in the 1980s, which was

phenomenally successful.

In my own experience [RH] and my impressions from other teachers, half of the

students who sign up for “developmental math” or “pre-calculus” or first-year calculus will drop

out before the final exam. Of those who take the final exam, around 50% pass, and around 50%

fail. Overall, 25% success, 75% failure. (Of course, there is a lot of variation, depending on

many factors.) These elementary math courses are prerequisites for desirable careers, not only

in science and engineering, but also in medicine, business, and architecture. Many students

who finally pass the course do so only after several repeated failures. Most of them would not

be there at all, if the course were not a prerequisite for some career goal.

This is the ethical dilemma Stephens confronted: Is he serving these students, or is he

harming them, by forcing them into courses they would rather avoid, where they experience

repeated failure? Is a teacher permitted to participate in such a dysfunctional, destructive

system of education, or is he obligated to do all in his power to change it for the better? These

issues are seldom discussed, but they are central to the ethics of teaching. If participation in an

educational experience diminishes the students and robs them of self-respect and confidence

in approaching new challenges, then the very mission of teaching is debased. In our

contemporary obsession with the “necessity” of mathematical and scientific expertise for the

greatest number of students, we fail to carefully balance psychological and educational costs

and advantages. One resolution of this ethical conflict is to examine the usefulness of higher

mathematics as an educational filter and to rethink where, how, when, and to whom it is a

necessary requirement and thus minimize the psychological damage so many students

experience. Another solution is the one followed by Clarence Stephens based on his own

personal and school history.

Stephens’ parents died when he was a young child, and he supported himself through

high school and a bachelor’s degree at Johnson C. Smith University, a traditionally Black

institution in North Carolina. He earned master’s and doctor’s degrees in mathematics at the

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University of Michigan. During his years as a graduate student, the University of Michigan did

not employ African-Americans as teaching assistants, and he earned a living by waiting on

tables.

He started teaching at Prairie State University, a traditionally Black institution in Texas,

while still working on his Ph.D. from Michigan. There he discovered that one of his African-

American students, Beauregard Stubblefield, already understood the elementary material in his

course. Professor Stephens gave him a grade of “A” and made him an assistant in the course to

provide a model who had the same educational experience as the other students.

In finding this special role for Stubblefield, Stephens used a creative solution, providing him a

useful role as an example to students whose fear of mathematics he did not share. (Stubblefield

went on to get a Ph.D. at Michigan, the same school Stephens had gone to, and had a long

teaching career at colleges in the U.S. and abroad.)

After a few years at Prairie State, Stephens moved to Morgan State College, another

traditionally Black institution, in Baltimore. His reason for going there was to have access to the

mathematics library at Johns Hopkins. He was surprised to find that Morgan State was hiring

him as department chair, at the young age of 30.

Early in his teaching, Stephens had become convinced that any college student who

wanted to learn college mathematics could do so, “under the right conditions.” He wrote:

“When I tutored my fellow schoolmates in mathematics during my high school days, I learned

that many students can learn mathematics if the learning environment is favorable. So when I

was given the opportunity of leadership in the Chair of a mathematics department, I was

determined to prove my conjecture. My main difficulty in proving it was that students, faculty,

and administration did not believe my conjecture was true. However, in my effort to prove it, I

received support from each group. The students I was trying to help gave me the best support.

The results we obtained at Morgan State College and at SUNY in Potsdam proved, at least to

me, that my conjecture was true” (Megginson, 2003, p. 179).

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What did Stephens mean by “the right conditions”? He did not impose any particular

teaching style or theory. Observers at Potsdam found that math teachers there were free to

work in the style that suited them best. But Stephens continually implemented two very non-

traditional precepts.

First of all, recognize that for most students, it takes time to assimilate new

mathematical concepts. Stephens like to say, “make haste slowly. Give the students as much

time as they need to learn the material.” This precept contrasts with the usual practice of

maximizing the amount of material students are to learn in an emotionally neutral and

frequently cold environment. Thus, his second and even more important precept: Believe in

the students. Let them know you are confident that they will succeed (Megginson, 2003).

As department chair, Stephens worked slowly and patiently to win over his faculty to his

educational philosophy. It directly contradicts several standard ideas prevalent in U.S. math

education. For instance, “math is only for certain people.” And also, “the reason most people

flunk is just lack of ability.” Stephens’ success as a teacher is indeed remarkable, but it is not

unique. There are other exceptional teachers, who succeed where others fail. Most

remarkable, indeed unique, is his success in leading whole departments to accept and follow

these beliefs.

How did he do it? With his faculty as with his students, he was gentle. He let them have

all the time they needed, before they could accept his unorthodox, heretical teaching

philosophy. There were several essential elements to his achievement. First of all, he was able

to recognize, from his own success as a high-school tutor, that students who want to learn

college math can do so, under the right conditions. This meant thinking independently, based

on his own observation and experience, even at the cost of disagreeing with and rejecting the

received wisdom, “what everybody knows.” But he went further than just thinking

independently; he had the insight, the creativity, to imagine a different way of teaching college

mathematics, a way to create “the right conditions.” This was indeed a daring thought, for it

was about much more than changing his own teaching behavior. He had the courage to

17

undertake to change the teaching behavior of all his colleagues. Many of them certainly would

at first find his ideas to be fantastic. And not only was he able to imagine a more productive,

humane way of teaching college mathematics, and able to think it possible to convert all his

colleagues to such a way of teaching, he was able actually to persist, in calm, quiet, persuasive

behavior year after year, in order to gradually convince and win all of them over. Stephens’

manner, beliefs, patience, and knowledge all contributed to an ethical creativity that confronts

current practice and presents an important model for mathematical teaching.

Conclusion

We have focused on three case studies where brave individuals drew on their creativity

and fashioned ethical solutions to challenging social problems. We start with some of the most

overwhelming issues scientists have confronted in the application of their discoveries. We

present an individual, Leo Szilard, who spent his life trying to prevent the actual use of atomic

bomb on a human population at the end of World War II and during the years that follow. He

once argued that the nuclear crisis will not be resolved until both scientists and politicians will

practice “the art of the impossible” (Lanquette, 1992, p. 301). “This, I believe, might be

achieved when statesmen will be more afraid of the atomic bomb than they are afraid of using

their imagination, because imagination is the tool which has to be used if the impossible is to

be accomplished” (Lanquette, 1992, p. 301).

A similar belief in the power of imagination fueled Friedl Dicker-Brandeis as she taught

art to the young inmates of the Terezín concentration camp. For Friedl, creativity was the

means for ethical response to the tragic life that she and her students’ faced. She is an example

of the transformation that art and teaching can accomplish even under the most inhuman

circumstances. Teaching and learning are profoundly emotional as well as intellectual

endeavors. Creative solutions are needed for the ethical challenges of alienation and damage to

students’ self-respect in many educational settings. To overcome these challenges, Clarence

Stephens relied on imagination and caring to transform the status quo in mathematical

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education. The stories of these three individuals reveal how they used their talents and

principles to change the world as they found it.

References

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Scribner. Megginson, R. E. (2003). Yueh-Gin Gung and Dr. Charles Y. Hu award to Clarence F. Stephens for

distinguished service to mathematics. American Mathematical Monthly 110(3), 177-180. Poland, J. (March, 1987). A modern fairy tale. American Mathematical Monthly, 94(3), 293. The Franck Report (1945). Report of the Committee on Political and Social Problems

Manhattan Project "Metallurgical Laboratory" University of Chicago, June 11, 1945. U.S. National Archives, Washington D.C.: Record Group 77, Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy File, folder #76. http://www.dannen.com/decision/franck.html

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Weissberger, E. (2001). Personal Interview with Linny Wix, July 24. Wix, L. (2010). Through a narrow window: Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and her Terezín students.

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