The grandma test

“The grandma test” was Bob Silbey’s only rule for teaching. It was my first experience really teaching a class, and I was in the company of a truly outstanding instructor. Silbey was someone who brought even the most complicated and abstract concepts of physical chemistry to life. He made the ideas approachable, recognisable and within grasp of our imagination. This was 2004 — I was a post-doc and Silbey was the dean at the school of science at MIT. Despite being incredibly busy, he had agreed to do what he loved most; come to the classroom. I had asked him, what was his secret recipe. I had no idea what he meant by the “grandma test”. Silbey, in his characteristic style, said a teacher should be able to explain the concepts that he covers in the class to anyone, including his own grandmother.

As the years have passed, I have had the pleasure of meeting with hundreds of Pakistani graduate students at institutions from all provinces. I have also taught them in summer and winter schools, and have spent time with them in their labs. They possess intellectual gifts just as their peers in the US. That said, I have yet to meet a single graduate student who is able to explain his or her research to me in simple, intuitive terms. Not once has a student been able to describe to me what he or she is working on in a clear and lucid manner without using extensive jargon and technical details. The students, despite their intellectual gifts, struggle to describe why their work matters, what makes their question important and how are they pursuing it. Even those who work close to my own area often get stuck describing complicated phenomenon in simple terms. For those who are outside the field, and are just curious, this can be truly off-putting. Most importantly, it creates a culture of exclusion and suggests that ideas in science are not intuitive. In a country like Pakistan, where appreciation of science, reason and experimentation is already lacking, this does tremendous disservice.

If we analyse the reason behind our inability to teach others, an unfortunate reality starts to emerge. Perhaps our students just do not understand the concepts well enough. Perhaps they just do not know it themselves, and hence resort to jargon and complicated terminologies. Einstein supposedly said that if you cannot explain it simply, you simply do not understand it. Could it be that our students are operating mechanically, churning the engine of activity, without really internalising and understanding things well enough? There is reason to believe that this may be the case. I also saw this as we put together a science festival earlier this year, where a number of graduate students, despite being engaged in tremendously exciting projects, simply couldn’t explain their work to the general audience.

Fortunately, this is reversible. However, it requires a serious effort on the part of instructors, professors and research supervisors. Graduate students should be given opportunities to engage with non-scientists, media and, above all, the general public. They should be encouraged to explain their work in simple terms, in a manner that is jargon-free and relatable. The point is not to trivialise science, but to make it accessible.

The list of scientists, in all disciplines, making their work reach broadly is long and continues to grow. There is no reason we cannot ask our students to have the capacity to explain their work to their family, neighbours, friends and colleagues.

Bob Silbey died in October 2011. I do not have the teaching gifts he did — but every time I step in front of the students in my classroom, I ask myself if I would be able to explain the concepts to my grandma!

Published in The Express Tribune, October 31^st, 2017.

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