Educating the Gifted or for that matter Anyone Else

This past week I finished reading Explorations in Giftedness by Sternberg, Jarvin and Grigorenko. Sternberg has been studying intelligence and giftedness for many years and I’ve read some of his work before. This book covers some of the history of studying “giftedness”, goes through the pros and cons of different formulations of giftedness, discusses how one measures giftedness, and suggests how the gifted should be educated. The authors also elaborate on one of Sternberg’s models that goes by the acronym WICS – Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity, Synthesized. A one-paragraph overview of his book can be found in my previous post.

In today’s post, I want to discuss selections in the final chapter titled “Educating the Gifted”. I think the suggestions made are applicable to all teachers, regardless of whether they are teaching gifted students or not. There are four principles followed by suggestions for each. I briefly outline the first three, and focus more on the final point. Each principle comes with more detailed suggestions that I’ve omitted here. If you are interested, get the book and read this final chapter!

The first principle is that students have different goals and motivations, and they define success differently. How then does the educator effectively teach to this range? The authors suggest that educators (a) provide numerous examples of concepts that cover a wide range of applications, (b) give students multiple and diverse options in assessment, and (c) grade student work in a way that preserves both the integrity of the course while taking into account student life goals. These are all generally good things to do although possibly time-consuming for the teacher. In my previous class, I significantly expanded on (a), did some of (b), and I’m not sure how much I moved forward on the second half of (c). (The first half is implicit in my courses.)

The second principle is that teachers should help students capitalize on strengths and at the same time help them correct or compensate for weakness.  The authors state that (a) there is no one right way of teaching and learning, (b) there is no one right way of assessing students’ achievement, and educators should (c) teach and assess to weaknesses as well as strengths. I’d certainly agree with the three statements – however I think that as a teacher there are inherent limits to one’s flexibility. The authors correctly, I think, emphasize the variation in the students, but there are also variations in teachers – and this point is not addressed. I think teachers should capitalize on their strengths but to the extent possible compensate for weaknesses. As teachers we should recognize our limitations in utilizing the plethora of suggested teaching “techniques” out there.

The third principle is that students need to learn to balance adaptation to, shaping of, and selection of environments. The authors state that (a) students, like, teachers, need to develop flexibility, (b) students need to be allowed and even encouraged to take risks and to make mistakes, (c) students need to learn how to overcome obstacles. Again I think these are all things we should structure into our course activities as teachers. Since I teach at the college level, where there is a stronger emphasis on developing critical thinking skills (over rote learning), I’ve tried to model this principle in my courses to challenge the students and encourage them to challenge themselves. I must admit that many times I don’t go as far as I should because, to be honest, the students seem rather resistant to this approach. Perhaps it is because the average student and the majority of my students are honestly not at all hungry for knowledge and learning. Hence I have had some activities fall flat, possibly for lack of sufficient motivation – something I need to keep working on.

The fourth principle is that teaching and assessment should balance use of analytical, creative, practical, and wise thinking. The four areas are defined in detail in the book. (I won’t go over this. Get yourself a copy and read it!) The authors make the very important exhortation that we should “put behind the false dichotomy of teaching for thinking and teaching for the facts, or between emphases on thinking and emphases on memory.” In the paragraph below, I’ve spliced together their elaboration on this point – they say it much better than I would. Subsequently I’ll discuss my thoughts.

“Thinking always requires memory and the knowledge base that is accessed through our memories. On cannot analyze what one knows if one knows nothing. One cannot creatively go beyond the existing boundaries of knowledge if one does not know what those boundaries are. And one cannot apply what one knows in a practical manner if one does not know anything to apply. At the same time, memory for facts without the ability to use those facts is really useless. [Skipping vignette here.] It is for this reason that we encourage teachers to teach and assess achievement in ways that enable students to analyze, create with, and apply their knowledge. [The research shows] an added benefit: Students perform better on assessments, apparently without regard to the form the assessments take. [Skipping lots of details and study data here.] Teachers who teach for wisdom will explore with students the notion that conventional abilities and achievements are not enough for a satisfying life. [Skipping lots of examples here.] Students should be encouraged to think about how almost everything they study might be used for better or worse ends, and to realize that the ends to which knowledge is put do matter. Teachers need to realize that the only way they can develop wisdom in their students is to serve as role models of wisdom themselves.”

It was very interesting that in core curriculum discussions in a multidisciplinary group (even if all “scientists”), that the “dichotomy” mentioned by the authors came up. Nobody disagreed in principle that it was a false dichotomy at least at the philosophical level, but when it came around to constructing the curriculum and learning goals, the tension between content (knowledge) and thinking (skill) came up again and again. It almost seemed as if there were two camps, each trying to emphasize one side of the dichotomy that they thought the other side was implicitly down-playing. Having recently been involved in two different core curricula discussions in two institutions, I think we will need to keep iterating through the curriculum while keeping the balance in mind.

The other point that the authors make is that all four areas on their list (analytical, creative, practical, and wise thinking) should be given a significant amount of shared time. They emphasize that this is particularly challenging and that for most teachers, one of the areas is dominantly emphasized over the others. It was very clear to me that I emphasize the analytical over the rest. I have secondary emphasis on the practical. I think it has something to do with my own training and my field of expertise as a theorist although I’ve been trying to slowly correct this over the years. My lip service to the creative has mostly been through historical vignettes in class, and my allusions to wise thinking come up mainly in outside of class discussions with my students, and on very rare occasions as small “wisdom tidbits” in class. Sternberg and colleagues have reminded me to work more on this.

I’ve just started doing tiny bits of preparation for my classes in the upcoming Fall semester. Right now I’m still mainly in summer research mode and I don’t want to shortchange my research students (given I had neglected them somewhat during the semester). In any case, the two classes I am slated to teach will provide many opportunities to incorporate more of the balanced approach suggested by the authors. The question is whether I’m willing to put in the time and energy into doing this well. Readers of my blog will know that revamping my class last semester took quite a bit of time and energy, but I think it was well worth the effort. And I enjoyed it!

Big Data, Mass Surveillance and Magic Detection

Sometimes a confluence of reading different books gets me thinking about strange ideas. Besides finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last week, I also worked my way through Data and Goliath by Bruce Schneier, and this past weekend I started on Explorations in Giftedness by Robert Sternberg.

Schneier’s book is subtitled “The Hidden Battles to Capture Your Data and Control Your World”. Readers are introduced to the world of clandestine and not-so-clandestine surveillance, made increasingly more powerful as we share more of our personal information through a vastly interconnected Internet. The significant price reduction in storage space means that it is now cheap for governments to collect data, and potentially sift through it later. Some of the things that corporations and governments do are problematic and antithetical to liberty and freedom. Schneier issues a clarion call to the public towards political pressure to change the way things are headed. The book is easy to read, contains many vignettes related to the NSA documents leaked by Snowden, and one is introduced to the world of hackers. Schneier argues that privacy and security are not mutually exclusive and in fact should go hand-in-hand, and that the public has easily given up privacy because of government fear-mongering.

Sternberg’s book goes through a history of studying “giftedness” starting with the well-known longitudinal study carried out by Terman. Since then there have been many formulations of what giftedness means, how it is measured, and how the gifted should be educated. I’m partway through the book so I haven’t gotten to the suggested educational approaches yet. The book is more academic in nature, and therefore is slower reading. Besides comparing and contrasting the models of giftedness provided by others in the field, Sternberg also elaborates on his model that goes by the acronym WICS – Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity, Synthesized. While intelligence and creativity are often emphasized in many models, wisdom isn’t typically a word that comes up. Sternberg’s model of giftedness is dynamic as individuals change over time, and the environment also plays an important role in the development of giftedness, i.e., Sternberg (like many others) does not think that IQ tests tell the whole story. There is an interesting chapter on how intelligence is defined or emphasized differently in different cultures. I will soon be getting to the chapters on identifying the gifted and educating the gifted.

All this made me think about how youngsters are identified so that they can be invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. How does the school know who to invite? In the case of a magical family where everyone is capable of wielding magic, then it’s probably pretty straightforward in a small tight-knit Wizarding community. What about the cases where the parents are magic-users but the child is a Squib? Maybe word gets around in the Wizarding community so that the school knows who not to invite. But is this person truly a Squib or simply a very late bloomer? Is there a difference? The most interesting cases however have to do with Muggle-borns. How were Dean Thomas and Hermione Granger identified? One might ask how Tom Riddle Junior (a.k.a. Lord Voldemort) was identified given that the Gaunts lived like outcasts from the magical world and their affairs were not widely known. (Here's an earlier post speculating on how magic is related to genetics and environment.)

One possible way this could take place is if there was someone like Professor X of the X-Men, who when connected to Cerebro, can identify mutants through his telepathic powers. In this case there is some “signature” in the thought pattern of mutants that is distinguishable from non-mutants. No such person has been identified in the world of Harry Potter. Or perhaps there is a device in the Ministry of Magic that does something like this? How might it work? In analogy to the Big Data world of the internet we live in, one could piece together a lot of data (and the more we share the more there will be) to really get at the habits of a person. Tell-tale signs might identify someone’s habits, interests, activities, and more. In the same way, maybe by monitoring the “airwaves” (EM radiation rears its head again!), the magic community can read “magic” signatures.

These signatures aren’t completely accurate though. For example when Dobby casts a spell in Privet Drive in Book 2, Harry is blamed for performing under-aged magic.  So it seems there is a magic detection mechanism, but it cannot be pinpointed to a particular individual. In this particular case it could not distinguish human and elf magic. So is the Ministry of Magic listening around for signs of magic? They must do so to keep the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy. They seem to operate somewhat like the Men In Black. When there is a big mess-up that reveals the existence of aliens on the planet, the Men In Black have to use memory wipes and plant a false memory or story to keep the alien world secret.

But if there are signatures of Magic that can be read through the “airwaves”, shouldn’t Muggles with their satellites start to be able to pick this up? There should be a tell-tale sign. As we collect more and more data about EVERYTHING, maybe a strange signature will come up. Maybe it already has but we haven’t recognized it yet – or perhaps we have come up with an alternative explanation that is “scientific”. Now I don’t think there really is a magic-using community (or aliens and men-in-black hiding in plain sight), nor do I think that we’re all hooked up to the Matrix, but I can’t conclusively prove otherwise simply based on sensory data. Should we analyze the data to check anyway? This reminds me of what SETI does – we’re listening to the outer space airwaves for signs of alien life? Maybe we should listen on our own planet. Or maybe it’s already there and there’s a big government cover-up – the plot for many a story!

Wandlore

I finally finished my re-read of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was lots of fun! This time around, I was particularly struck by the discussions surrounding wandlore – the study of the magical properties of wands. So what do we know about wands?

First, they are used to channel and perhaps control magic. Children who have magical ability but have not yet received wands can “do” magic although it is clearly limited and in some cases uncontrollable. In Book 1, strange things happen around Harry that seem triggered by his subconscious during times of stress. In Book 7, the young Severus explains to Lily that they are let off by the Ministry of Magic if they are not of age (eleven) and do not yet have wands. Without a wand, a wizard or witch is almost powerless – thus the efficacy of disarming one’s opponent with Expelliarmus!

Second, there is a special synergy between the wand and its bearer or owner. When Harry first steps into Ollivander’s shop he is told that “the wand chooses the wizard”. If one is not the proper owner of a wand, it does not work as well – the spells cast seem weaker and/or less efficacious. When Harry’s wand is broken almost beyond repair, and he uses the blackthorn wand that Ron obtained, it seems not to work as well for him. His original wand “chose” him because it recognized his relationship to Voldemort through his scar and Horcrux-connection. How the wand recognizes this is unclear. Perhaps there is a connection to how the Sorting Hat works in that it recognizes synergies between the wearer and the traits of a particular Hogwarts House.

Third, wands have a core magical object that presumably is the main component responsible for channeling magic. Harry and Voldemort both have phoenix feathers from Fawkes. Unicorn hair, dragon heartsring and veela hair are also mentioned as examples of core objects. The physicality of the wand seems to also have a superficial connection with physical characteristics or personality of its owner. In Book 7, when asked to identify wands that Harry has won or captured at Malfoy manor, Bellatrix’s wand is described as “unyielding” and Draco’s is “reasonably springy”. Hagrid’s wand was very long and Umbridge’s is short, in accordance with their relative physical sizes. The different wood used may also have significance but it’s unclear to me what the connections might be.

Fourth, wands have differential relative power. This is clearly the case for the Elder Wand. If the bearer is indeed the true owner of the wand, it cannot fail to win a magical duel, at least according to the Tale of the Three Brothers. After defeating Voldemort (it is unclear who is the true owner at this point), Harry is able to use the Elder Wand to repair his original wand where other wands could not. Ollivander even had declared his wand beyond repair.

Fifth, wands can change allegiances if the winner has properly bested the loser in some sort of a magical duel. The question of ownership and allegiance is explored in Book 7, although clearly it is complex and Ollivander admits there is still much that is not understood. Certainly wandmakers have been studying the secrets and delving into the mysteries of wandlore, and in this regard they sound like scientists – in fact I might even venture that they are chemists (or perhaps alchemists) of a sort. Chemists try to make materials that have certain properties and sometimes the properties of the synthesized material are not quite what one would have predicted theoretically – which makes things even more interesting and worthy of further study.

Let’s explore this a little further: How would one go about being a wandmaker? If the purpose of the wand is to channel magic (and I’ve speculated that it may involve manipulating EM radiation), then it needs to have something that focuses the magic – thus the core magical component. The core component must be embedded in appropriate wood of an appropriate size and shape. Presumably some combinations work and others do not, and these different variables can be arranged to fit certain wizards or witches. Maybe there is a synergy between the core component and the magical aura of a witch or wizard, and they interact in some way. The connection though is made through tests – let a new eleven-year old “try” a wand, and go through several until you see some evidence of such synergy. With experience, one can start to detect patterns.

Wandlore seems to be a branch of magic that is still being pushed in further study – advanced magic of a sort. There is probably a guild of wandmakers that study and perhaps share such information amongst themselves. The brilliant young Dumbledore is said to have corresponded with notable magical practitioners in his day. Maybe if there was some sort of Magic graduate school (is that what comes after N.E.W.T.s?) wandlore might be one of the topics. The guild system in the middle ages is probably the forerunner to graduate training, and perhaps that is how the magical world still operated.

Will we ever be able to make wands? Actually Nyko makes them – and they might work well if we were simulating a Harry Potter adventureland, perhaps like this one advertised in Poland. I should read up to see what the participants thought about their experience. Maybe there will be something interesting for a follow-up post.

The Magic of a Core Curriculum: Can it be transplanted?

With cloudy grey weather and light drizzles this week, I have spent some of my lunch breaks in front of the computer browsing higher education news websites and articles. The most interesting article I read this past week was called Teaching vs. Learning from Inside HigherEd written by Steven Mintz

The article begins by extolling the virtues of a core curriculum “great books” program. This is what first caught my eye since I went through one of these as an undergraduate at a liberal arts college. I won’t repeat the arguments in favor of such a program (you can read the article). While I personally did not benefit as much from my own experience, due to scheduling difficulties resulting in my taking such a core humanities in my final year (alongside all the first-year student), I support the idea behind the approach and I think this is a potentially very valuable experience for students both inside and outside the classroom.

What I found interesting is that, at least in the Columbia program, the instructors are called “preceptors”. As Mintz points out, this “originally referred to the head of a preceptory, a fraternal or military order. A preceptor, then, is less a teacher or mentor than a senior member of a brotherhood.” Coincidentally, at my current institution, each incoming first-year students is assigned a small class of 20 students called a “preceptorial”.  The faculty preceptor, in addition to teaching the material for that course, also functions as the students’ academic adviser until they declare a major. I have been a faculty preceptor many times, but had never bothered to look up what the word’s roots. I simply thought of it as the “academic advising” part of my job (which I view as part of the holistic education provided to our students). I hadn’t quite thought about it in terms of my teaching.

This brings me to the second interesting point that Mintz brings up. One of the criticisms of such core courses is that they are “amateurish bull session[s] due to the fact that sections are led by non-specialists who do not richly contextualize the readings. In fact, the great books core prides itself on [such] an approach… reading texts without the scaffolding of earlier exegesis.” And furthermore, “many of the richest learning experiences, especially in the humanities, involve learning, but not structured teaching (as generally defined). Nor do these experiences depend on a teacher as authority figure or fount of knowledge.”

This is clearly different from what I do as a preceptor. I teach General Chemistry to first-year students. We use the same textbook as all the other general chemistry sections. Now I do teach the course a little differently because I can leverage the small class size of 20 students by structuring learning activities that are not so easy to pull off in a much larger class. However my deep knowledge of chemistry is crucial to the course. Now one might argue that the goals and the approach taken by a great books course is what Mintz would call Learning, and that this is somewhat different from Teaching, which might happen in a science or technical course. Here’s the relevant paragraph that forms the basis of the title of his essay.

“To teach is to impart knowledge and skills or to give instruction. To learn, however, is generally quite different. To be sure, it involves acquiring knowledge and skills—though this is rarely the product of oral transmission. It is to construct a framework for understanding and to acquire enduring mastery over a wide range of content, skills, and habits of mind. It involves synthesis, interpretation, judgment, and application. It is attained partly by listening, but also by practice, problem-solving, reflection, and active learning.”

I disagree with this dichotomy since I think of teaching and learning as an integrated whole. I also think that a large part of what I do is to help my students construct a framework for understanding, acquire wide-ranging mastery, and learn the necessary habits of mind. (To be clear, I don’t actually think Mintz is making this dichotomy as stark as I am painting it. I’m just using this rhetorical device to make my own points.) But is there something different between the humanities and the sciences in this regard? And is this learning something that does not require the preceptor to have mastery in particular areas?

When I was an undergraduate, the core humanities required of all first-year students had larger lectures (very much “sage on the stage”) and smaller sections (very much “guide by the side”). The lecture would be delivered by a content expert – or at least someone with a Ph.D. and expertise in some part of the subject matter that overlapped with the reading. The revolving door of lecturers spanned a gamut of fields, mainly in the humanities and the arts, but occasionally in the social sciences. (There was never a scientist.) The section facilitator, on the other hand, was permanent throughout the semester. For one semester I had an English professor, and for the other semester I had a Political Science professor. This means that for much of the semester, the discussions were not centered on the expertise of the professor. This actually seemed to work fine, or at least I did not notice anything amiss – possibly because the two professors I had were very experienced and had been at the college a long time. Could a scientist have facilitated the discussion? Possibly, I think. I'd like to try it some day. (My colleagues in the humanities may disagree.) But it would require some training and changes in how many of us scientists “teach” our courses.

Could you use the same structure in a core scientific inquiry course? Possibly. And this time I speak from experience, having organized an interdisciplinary teaching team to attempt this feat. Note that this was a scientific inquiry course rather than one focused on scientific content (although some content is inevitably taught and learned.) The structure we adopted was similar to the humanities – larger lectures with revolving content experts and smaller sections (each having the same facilitator throughout the semester) designed around hands-on activities and discussions surrounding the different modes of scientific inquiry we wanted the students to learn. Did we get it right the first time around? No. But I can now see how it could potentially work and perhaps work well after several iterations.

One of the biggest challenges that instructors felt was significant was feeling out of depth when the week’s activities were not centered around that person’s discipline. In this regard, perhaps I was “fortunate” to be a chemist with wide-ranging interests in both biology and physics, who happened to be pursuing research at the intersection of all three disciplines. I was also an experienced instructor who had taught swaths of science majors and non-science majors in a gamut of different courses. So while I had a blast in my sections (and I delivered a couple of the chemistry lectures), I think my less experienced and more narrowly trained colleagues from other fields found it rather challenging and stressful. But perhaps it’s not just an issue of experience, but rather that there is something inherent in how most scientists are trained to specialize so narrowly, how science curricula are structured, how quickly you run into difficulties answering questions outside your field, and how the fundamental questions in science are different from the fundamental questions in the humanities. There was also significant difficulty in managing student expectations and varied levels of exposure in the sciences, but that’s a subject for another blog post. Now back to Mintz’s essay.

The third interesting point that Mintz brings up is posed as a question. After discussing how the humanities core contributes to identity development (a la Chickering), holistic learning (a la Bloom), integrative (breaking down disciplinary boundaries), and immersive, he asks: “[Can we] take the elements that the core does well and apply these to other classes or academic programs. In short, can we separate the container from the content? For many, the magic of the core lies in its content. But I’d like to suggest that much of the magic lies in the approach, which is developmental, holistic, integrative, immersive, and learner-centered.” (And this is where the title of my blog post comes from!)

I’d like to think that many of us already try to do some of this when we design the courses we teach regularly. I had not really thought about this connection until after my experience teaching the interdisciplinary core-like scientific inquiry course. Since then, some of my pedagogy and curriculum design changes in my chemistry courses have been influenced by thinking about the approach, and not the content. This is not to say that content is unimportant (and I certainly need to cover a fair bit of it in my chemistry classes), but perhaps too much of curricula design is content-driven. This was certainly the case in my first year as a faculty member. I was teaching the dreaded P-Chem (physical chemistry) year-long sequence. What did I do to prepare? I sketched out the content I needed to cover and how I was going to teach it to the students. But it was mainly about covering content. I didn’t think as much about the pedagogical approach (I chalk this up to sheer inexperience) and what learning entailed. I had a bunch of “teaching methods” up my sleeve, but they were disparate tactical tools rather than a coherent strategy.

It’s not magic after all, at least in this case. We now know a lot about how learners learn, and it behooves us as teachers to hone our craft to promote deep and transformative learning in our students. Writing this blog has been one of the ways I have been learning about learning, hopefully in a way that is indeed deep and transformative to my teaching. (I’ve tried to tag such posts under “teaching” for the interested reader!)

Summer Research and Reading

I have three research students this summer. The first one started a week ago and was by herself but now she has company. Two of my students are new to my lab. I trained the first student last week and she proved to be a quick learner and very capable of working independently. I think she’s going to make good progress this summer on her project. One of the students who started today is also new so I’m just getting her started on the training process. The other worked for me last semester as part of our required Research Methods course. He will be continuing his project from last semester, which turned out to be quite challenging. That’s what happens when you’re doing research – sometimes you have to try many things before you start to make some headway. I did have a brainwave a couple of weeks ago on his project so he’s excited about trying two parallel approaches to the problem he’s working on. I look forward to seeing what comes out of it.

My philosophy is to give my students their own individual projects to work on, some of which can be quite different from what others are doing. They are inter-related though, so my students can help each other to some extent but they don’t feel like they are competing against each other. (Some labs, none in my department, actually set up students in competition with each other.) However this also means I have to keep track of projects that vary in scope. During the summer, I require my students to write weekly updates that are then compiled into a final report at the conclusion of the summer project. Now that everyone is here we can also start having “group meetings” where students present updates on their research to each other. Both the writing and the oral presentations are good practice and are an important part of their education. We will also have some mini-classes where I teach them “theory” that goes beyond what they have encountered in class.

Summer is also a good time for me to catch up on research-related reading. In fact it was from skimming an article on a different (but related) topic a couple of weeks ago that I had my brainwave to move my student’s project further. I’m not sure exactly how these ideas come up. It may be that “chance favors the prepared mind” although sometimes when I get an idea, it feels like it comes out of the blue! I may not have done any reading beforehand and it’s like a zap of lightning or perhaps en-lightening!

Harry Potter has a similar epiphany in the chapters that I read yesterday night. I’m working my way through Book 7. (I had decided to re-read all the books as part of starting this new blog seven months ago so it seems fitting that I’m now on the last book!) At this juncture, our three main protagonists visit Xenophilius Lovegood, listen to the Tale of the Three Brothers, and are introduced to the Deathly Hallows. Harry draws the threads together and things suddenly make sense to him despite Hermione’s arguments against Harry’s narrative. He can’t satisfactorily answer all Hermione’s questions and counter-arguments but he has this sense that he has synthesized together a compelling idea. I remember when I read this for the very first time I had this sudden excitement – that’s why the book is called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! Wow! (The follow-up epiphany that Harry has in Shell Cottage when he makes his decision is another great part of the story – but I haven’t gotten to it in my current re-read.)

I’m looking forward to having the big encompassing “aha!” moment in my overarching research program. That hasn’t happened yet although I’m not surprised. I’m working on a fun, difficult problem with many avenues to investigate. Back when I was a relatively new faculty member, I attended a seminar by a famous chemist named George Whitesides and one thing he said really struck me. In speaking to younger scientists (he was addressing the students in the audience), he exhorted them not to take the easy path. He said that we scientists should be working on something that is difficult but interesting and meaningful, and not just pick the “safe” projects. Prof. Whitesides practices what he preaches and his interests are wide-ranging. I’m glad that I’ve taken his advice at least for the most part, however I’m a pragmatist (and perhaps not as clever or well-resourced as him). Therefore the projects I give students tend to have some “safe” aspects in the sense that I’d like my students to get some results as part of their education in research. It can be quite discouraging to be on a blue-sky project that yields nothing. Then again, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Should one go after Hallows or Horcruxes? Hmmm. I’ll have to think about that a bit more