Mortimer Adler, ED Hirsch, Juan Enriquez and What kids Should Learn

Northwestern University has a wonderful lecture series called Science and Society.  Last Thursday the lecturer was Juan Enriquez, a genomics entrepreneur, author, diplomat and philosopher.  The premise of his talk was that all wealth derives from code, whether that code is a cave painting, moveable type, computer software or DNA.  Among the astonishing ideas he brought to life that evening was that we are on the verge of manipulating genes with the same competence that we now manipulate computer code.

To Enriquez, the production of ethanol from corn kernels is a terrible way to produce gasoline, but a wonderful proof of concept.  What a waste, he said, to grow the corn just to feed it to bacteria, when the process could be abbreviated by simply rewriting the bacteria's genome to instruct it to produce the sugar it needs to produce its own ethanol.  Then it could simply be fed sludge and sunlight, and forgo the whole farming process.

Enriquez had wondered where scientific hypotheses came from, so he carefully traced the thoughts of lead researchers, who they spoke to, what articles they read and heard of through others.  He then made a chart of all the hundreds of sources of such an hypothesis.  If you've ever seen a model of a protein, you'll have an idea of what the chart looked like. But the most remarkable part to Enriquez (and to this father of English majors,) was that scientific insight always occurs in the presence of cultural insight.  That is, there is no science without the humanities.

In large part, the humanities require (or foster) a large amount of knowledge about culture, the issues we deal with in society, and the discussions, pro and con that have been made regarding those issues throughout history.  Philosopher Mortimer Adler, created a framework for acquiring that kind of knowledge, and presented it in what he called the Paideia Program schools, where a particular set of readings and discussions was directed for each successive grade. (I highly recommend an article by Adler collaborator, Jacques Barzun, about how to present history to children.  The Paideia Program, Adler et al., 1984.)

Which brings me to the new book by educator E.D. Hirsch, Jr. and his most recent book, The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools. While the educational standard today favors a so-called "child-centered" (learn how to learn) curriculum, Hirsch argues that these methods are not the way children actually learn.  He says that the best way to prepare children to pass tests, become professionals and to participate in self-governance, is to give them a "content-based" or "subject-based" curriculum, which Hirsch calls "cultural literacy." 


Drawing Adler's and Hirsch's thoughts into Enriquez' argument, I wonder whether not only is there no science without the humanities, but maybe there is also no science without cultural literacy.