Being Robust

I just finished reading Arrival of the Fittest by Andreas Wagner, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Zurich. Early on, the book hinted that it would reveal the secret to how new innovative structures are formed in living systems. I admit I was a little disappointed at the end, because the argument hinged mainly on a trade-off between robustness and efficiency. That being said, I learned some interesting things in the book. Chapter 6 (out of 7 chapters) was marvelous and got me thinking about how information is stored, accessed and acted upon – and how differently the “library” of metabolic reactions is different from how we would organize a library. Wagner’s take-home point is to look at genotype networks, but you’ll have to read through his book to understand what these mean.

The book did make me think about robustness and efficiency, and I found my mind wandering to education systems instead of molecular-based living systems. One way an education system can be robust is by being modular. This is a key characteristic that distinguishes the American education system from the British system. I’m familiar with the latter having gone through many years of it growing up in a Commonwealth country. In fact I chose the U.S. for tertiary education (turning down a nice scholarship to study pharmacy in the U.K.) because I have always been interested in teaching and I wanted to experience the U.S. system. (Timing-wise, I was aided by generous financial aid packages from liberal arts colleges wanting to expand their international student pool from under-represented countries. I give much thanks to the diverse and sometimes messy U.S. system for this.)

In the British system (which itself is changing) that I went through, one didn’t choose courses. There was no chemistry, honors chemistry, AP chemistry, or any other flavor. I was shunted into the “science” stream and started taking chemistry in my fourth year of secondary school equivalent to “Form 4” (for those of you who know the system). The curriculum and syllabus were set. I’ll call it Form 4 chemistry. Next year I took Form 5 chemistry. I honestly had very little idea what was going on in class, memorized a lot, and made it through national exams – a two-week grueling affair where one sat for multiple papers across all your subjects. It was only in Form 6 that things started to click. I still thought biology and physics were more interesting, but I found I was getting good at chemistry (at least from exam scores).

Coming to America was a bit of a shock. I was not used to the pick-and-choose curricular options. Yes, there were pre-requisites and co-requisites to help you keep on track, but in a small liberal arts college, you can often talk your way out of them (I did on multiple occasions, mainly because of timetable conflicts). The chemistry curriculum also had separate modules that sometimes overlapped in terms of course material, so you’d see the same thing though not in exactly the same way in two or more different classes. It’s not the most efficient way of learning the material. (That’s partly why the British-system takes 3 years while the American takes 4 years.) For example, I saw a small section on orbitals and hybridization in organic chemistry at the same time I was seeing them in a different context in inorganic chemistry. And then the next year, I saw them again differently in physical chemistry. Physical organic chemistry and advanced inorganic chemistry once again showed me different facets, although there was much overlap. (Chemical bonding is one of my specialties so I’ve thought deeply about this topic.) Then there was more in graduate school.

All this seemed messy and inefficient if the goal was to churn out cookie-cutter chemistry majors with the “content” topics they should be exposed to as an undergraduate. If I had not gone to the U.S., I would have been taking generic University Year 1 Chemistry instead of my plethora of interesting choices. But I think by seeing how different professors chose to present sometimes the same material in very different ways, I learned how to think robustly as a chemist. By being placed in different “environmental” conditions, I learned to adapt. If this sounds a little like evolutionary biology, maybe it’s because the two are analogous in some way. My training was robust, and I’ve found myself able to teach myself new chemistry and enter new areas I was previously unfamiliar with. This is not to say that one system is clearly better than the other. Over the years I’ve seen parts of the U.S. system move towards narrower training, while other parts of the world with British-like systems move towards broader and more modular approaches. The two systems are no longer as different as they were when I was a student.

My department periodically assesses its curricular offerings and we have made some recent changes to both our chemistry and biochemistry major requirements. In some places, we have restricted choice, and in other places we have opened it up by loosening pre-requisites and co-requisites. This requires modifications in the affected courses, in the former cases for better streamlining, and in the latter cases for improved modularity.

I have seen a similar evolution in my own teaching. When I first started, my lectures were very clean and systematic, as I marched through the material according to my pre-conceived plan, being careful not to deviate (so that the beautifully designed plan would be carried out efficiently). Now I allow for a bit more messiness, which may involve going down a rabbit-hole or two depending on the questions and discussion with the students. I have an inkling that part of teaching students how to think critically and creatively is by guiding them to becoming robust learners. Sometimes the students don’t appreciate it – they want the “quick, clean” answer so they can get on with their lives, but even though it takes more of my time, I should resist providing them with the quick, clean answer.

A final comment on the Wagner book: one consequence of extant life being robust to a certain extent is the suggestion that proto-life must have evolutionarily (in a chemical and physical, not biological, sense) “selected” for robustness. This means that it will be challenging to use the often-scientifically-successful reductionist approach in trying to understand the riddle of life. A much more complicated and messier systems chemistry approach will be needed as we move forward.