Walking with the father as an educational event in one’s life: autobiographical description of the learning experience of accomplished scientists

Abstract

In teaching, both the teacher and the student are not only the source and the result, but also an objective condition for human reproduction (Volya, Chusov 2012; Volya 2021a). A look at the methodology of science in a broader sense – as a doctrine of methods as much as of methodological practice implemented in the context of objects, subjects, subjects and circumstances (Chusov 2012; Volya 2021a, 740) – creates new research opportunities for explicating the problem of teaching experience. The study of the teaching experience of accomplished scientists is relevant for clarifying the idealized norms of teaching and is the purpose of this article. A unique experience of teaching in a scientific dynasty was described by John Stuart Mill. His father, James Mill, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and of scientific works on history and political economy, decided to realize his ideas as a scientist and citizen in his eldest son’s education. In raising his son, he followed the principle of ‘not wasting a minute of time’; much of his learning, apart from lessons, involved reading books and discussing what he read during walks. John Stuart Mill would briefly write down and summarize for his father the works he had read, mostly historical ones. Every day, in such conversations his father would explain to him issues related to civilization, government institutions, and moral and mental development, asking him to recapitulate what had been said in his own words (Mill 1874, 7). It is noteworthy that John Stuart Mill described his teaching experience from the perspective of an accomplished scientist. His account of this learning experience notably correlates educational events and an assessment of their impact on further development, both his own one and potentially the one of other people (Volya 2015b, 42). John Stuart Mill managed to pose such teaching problems of man as the principles of the content of education (at the limit of the capabilities of both the teacher and the student), the genesis of mental development, and gratitude to one’s teachers for one’s moral and intellectual development (Volya 2015b, 38). Walking with his father also becomes the subject of autobiographical reflection for Sergei Leonidovich Rubinstein, who recognizes the need to walk with his ill father as a key contributor to his sense of responsibility and personal development as a scientist and citizen (Rubinstein 1989).