Tell teacher: I think you may be wrong

Taiwanese Nobel laureate Lee Yuan Tseh's lecture on creativity captivated an audience of 250 on Monday night. It was followed by a Q and A session on how to nurture creativity in an Asian environment. KAO CHEN reports.

EASTERN European and Russian students tend to win top prizes in international school contests but they rarely go on to make scientific breakthroughs.

On the other hand, American students do not fare well in these competitions, but many of them later become Nobel Prize winners.

What makes the difference?

The former are an example of what good "training" in a regimented education system can produce while the latter are the result of being "educated" in an open, democratic society in which students are encouraged to ask questions and find out answers on their own.

So, the key to nurturing creativity is to distinguish between "training" students and "educating" them to raise new questions and solve problems for the future.

This was the thrust of Taiwanese Nobel laureate Lee Yuan Tseh's lecture, Educating Creative Young Scientists for the 21st Century.

The one-hour talk at the Marriott Hotel saw a rapt audience of 250, comprising educators, researchers and students. It was followed by a lively hour of discussion when participants pumped him with questions on how his ideas could be applied to an Asian environment.

Prof Lee, 63, who won the 1986 Nobel prize in chemistry, has been president of Academia Sinica, Taiwan's top research institution since he left the University of California at Berkeley in 1994.

He is here to deliver three lectures, hosted by World Scientific, a publishing company.

On the lack of creativity in Asian schools, Prof Lee noted that many students in the region were "trained" to pass and solve problems in examinations, but that had little to do with solving real problems that could lead to a scientific breakthrough.

Having a healthy dose of scepticism is crucial as "most breakthroughs start with a student telling his teacher: 'I think you might be wrong' ".

The difference in cultural environment, he pointed out, also explained why many Asians won Nobel Prizes for their work in America.

Drawing on his own experience, he credited his doctoral supervisor at UC Berkeley, the late Professor Bruce Mahan, for teaching him how to solve problems.

"When I joined his laboratory, I was baffled that he answered all my questions with: 'How do I know? If I do I would have solved the problem myself'," he said.

"At first I thought he did not teach me much but I was wrong. He taught me to solve problems for myself."

This has shaped the way he related to his own students at UC Berkeley and the Academia Sinica.

His advice to all teachers: ''Don't be afraid to say I don't know, because there are lots of interesting unknowns in science which students should become very curious and want to find out about."

While there are lots of discoveries waiting to be made, he said, they are not made randomly. "They will only happen where there are creative scientists, working in a fertile environment."

While there are no shortcuts to scientific breakthroughs, he said, "all the hard work is no sacrifice, because finding something nobody did before is fun, a very exciting venture".

The enjoyment comes from satisfying your curiosity, he said, adding that "all children are born with a strong sense of curiosity, although sometimes it becomes stifled with too much book learning".

Citing a recent Israeli trip to show how creativity is nurtured in their culture, he said: "I found out there that when the school children come home every day, their parents will quiz them about what happened in school and ask them: 'What questions did you raise today?'

"But in the Asian culture, the question asked is: 'What score did you get?' And if the score is 97, then: 'How did you miss three marks?'

"The last question is always: 'Did anyone get higher marks than you?' "