St Edwards University - Tower Yearbook (Austin, TX)

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‘neifist views with political and sometines Mientific ostracization. After the war “'ppenheimer spent ten years as a rancher in ‘blorado before returning to the classroom I d the laboratory. He came to San Hancisco in 1968 to put together the ‘xploratorium as a science museum at the | ’s Palace of Fine Arts—a forbidding U ezoleum that was erected in 1919. The side of the structure has hardly been ‘juched since it was a garage for army trucks ring the war... It is essential to the Exploratorium’s rpose that visitors can experiment and play” with the exhibits. Oppenheimer imself is concerned that the knowledge gap ptween scientists and nonscientists is icreasing. Most science museums, he says, ‘prify the past and the present but do little | make the wonders of science accessible to ue general public. In fact, Oppenheimer lieves that places like the Exploratorium ‘‘Yntaged” children with the rich environ- ‘‘Jent they need in order to escape the jstrictions of city life and to begin the jocess of discovery. This kind of compensa- ‘Jom or on TV. Trying to open the world to ‘“Vildren without authentic props is like | The Exploratorium has big plans for the ture. They include 800 new exhibits, | pansion into biological and other sciences, “id a library of portable exhibits that students could take to school and share with their classmates. But already, using only natural phenomena, Oppenheimer and his staff have created an experience that bends the mind in a way that few institutions can match. And turning kids on is, after all, what good teaching is all about. K.C. Cole, October 14, 1972. Copyright, Saturday Review, Inc. “Teaching science in a classroom takes the speculation and imagination out of learning. There's always a right and a wrong answer. Actually, scientists base what they do largely on esthetics. Frank Oppenheimer Exploratorium director 33

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EXPLORA- TORIUM ! The art of discovery in San Francisco A high-frequency oscillator-transformer 1s not a typical toy for a six-year-old. But then, not much is typical about San Francisco’s Exploratorium—a magician’s sack of “Don’t touch that!” wonders that b eg to be opened, touched, pounded, pulled on, looked through, listened to, screeched at, and climbed on. The high-frequency oscillator- transformer lies in wait for the unsuspecting six-year-old at the Exploratorium’s entrance, about four feet from the donation barrel. As the visitor contributes his dime or nickel, the coin activates a switch that sends 300,000 volts of purple lightning zapping from a tall pole, turning on five phosphorescent tubes. It is the rare child—or even grown-up—who doesn’t drop in a second coin just to see what happens. Such “sight-seeing” is what the Explora- torium is all about—and what director Frank 32 Oppenheimer believes is the necessary first step toward learning and discovery. Not the guided-bus-tour kind of sight-seeing where the driver tells you what you see—or what you should be seeing. But the get-out- and-get-dirty kind of sight-seeing where you explore first and ask questions later . . . All Exploratorium exhibits are designed to be enjoyed—and learned from—on many levels. In a far corner of the dim, semi- circular cavern, a father and his small son are experimenting with a pedal generator. The that it pedaling to keep the three lights bright than son discovers takes a lot more it does to ride his own bike up a steep hill. Electricity comes from energy. The father, meanwhile, is more interested in the sign that says that you can buy the energy re- quired to keep the lights bright for just 1 100th of a cent. He gets into a long dis- cussion with an Explainer about sources o}) power, nuclear generators, motors, and why the family station wago won t start on cold mornings. electric ca}, Oppenheimer roams the Exploratoriur}, continually to see how visitors are using th} exhibits. The museum changes daily as ex}, hibits are rotated or modified. In fact, th}, Exploratorium is one of the few museum}, that keeps its exhibits only so long as th} staff doesn’t get bored with them. The staf itself is a schizophrenic collection of artist: engineers, teachers, designers, and anybod else who happens to like the place or walk in with a good idea. The “Limbie System,” multi-colored bubble that reflects an imag into infinity, was created by Berkeley sculf tor and, balloonist Ted Bridenthal. Opper heimer is a physicist and professor who, lik}. rejected nuclear weaponry and paid for hi |

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FREE SGHOOLS A Time for Cando1 34 F.. the past six years free schools have almost been pets of the media. Too little of this coverage, however, has focused on the deep and often overwhelming problems that confront some of these schools: the terrible anguish about power and the paralyzing inhibition about the functions of the teacher. . . It is time for us to come right out and make some straightforward statements on the misleading and deceptive character of certain slogans that are now unthinkingly received as gospel. It is just not true that the best teacher is the one who most successfully pretends that he knows nothing. Nor is it true that the best answer to the blustering windbag of the old-time public school is the free-school teacher who attempts to turn himself into a human inductive fan. . . The challenge ... is to define ourselves with absolutely implacable precision—and to do so even in the face of economic danger, even in the certain knowledge of the loss of possible allies. “This is what we are like, and this is the kind of place that we are going to create. This is the kind of thing we mean by freedom, and this is the sort of thing we have in mind by words like ‘teach’ and ‘learn.’ This is the sort of thing we mean by competence, effectiveness, survival. If you like it, join us. If you don’t, go someplace else and start a good school of your own.” Such precision and directness are often the rarest commodities within free schools. Too many of us are frightened of the accusation of being headstrong, tough, authoritarian, and, resultingly, we have tried too hard to be all things to all potential friends. . . The issue comes into focus in the choice of teachers and in the substance of curriculum. In an effort to avoid the standard brand of classroom tyranny that is identified so often with the domi- neering figure of the professional in the public system, innovative free-school teachers often make the grave mistake of n ducing themselves to ethical and pedagogic: neuters. The teacher too often takes the rol of one who has no power: The myth of this familiar pretense | that the teacher, by concealing his ow views, can avoid making his influence felti the classroom. This is not the case. N teacher, no matter what he does or does no say, Can ever manage not to advertise hi biases to the children. A teacher “teaches” not only or evel primarily by what he says. At least in part he teaches by what he is, by what he does by what he seems to wish to be... It is particularly disabling when a stron, and serious free school begun by parents 0 poor children in an urban situation find itself bombarded by young teachers wh« adhere without restraint or self-examinatior to these values. Not only does such behavioi advertise gutlessness and weakness to the children, it also represents a good deal o! deception and direct bamboozlement. The willingness of the highly skilled white teacher to blur and disguise his owr effectiveness and to behave as if he were less competent and effective than he really is provides the basis for a false democracy between himself and the young poor children he works with. The children, in all honesty, can’t do nothing. The young man from Princeton only acts as if he can’t. The consequence of this is a spurious level of egalitarian experience from which one party is always able to escape, but from which the other has no realistic exit. [ believe, for these reasons, in the kind of free school in which adults do not try to seem less vigorous or effective than they are. I believe in a school in which real power, leverage, and at least a certain degree of undisguised adult direction are not viewed with automatic condescension or disdain. | believe in a school in which the teacher does not strive to simulate the status or condition of either an accidental “resource-person,” wandering mystic, or movable reading lab, but comes right out, in full view of the