Provocative Pairs
Learning with the Masters

Volume II: Humanities, Sciences, and More

By Robert DiYanni, New York University

 Table of Contents

 
 

Preface

 

PART ONE: Humanities +

 

Literature

 

Chapter One

1. Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer
2. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau
3. Walt Whitman and Robert Frost

 

Chapter Two

4. J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis
5. Toni Morrison and Maxine Hong Kingston

 

Chapter Three

6. Gwendolyn Brooks and Kenneth Koch
7. Tillie Olsen and Shirley Chisolm

 

Chapter Four

8. Susan Sontag and Umberto Eco
9. Zadie Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 

Chapter Five

10. Harold Bloom and Camille Paglia
11. George Orwell and Annie Dillard
12. Adrian Barlow and Sheridan Blau

 

Rhetoric & Language

 

Chapter Six

13. Mina Shaughnessy and Mike Rose
14. Kenneth Burke and Ann E. Berthoff

 

Chapter Seven

15. Deborah Tannen, John McWhorter
16. Gregory Rabassa and Edith Grossman
17. Pat C. Hoy II and William V. Costanzo

 

Chapter Eight

18. Robert Boynton and Robert Gottlieb
19. John McPhee and Jhumpa Lahiri
20. Steven Pinker and Cornel West

 

Politics, Society, History

 

Chapter Nine

21. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
22. Franz Fanon and Hannah Arendt

 

Chapter Ten

23. Edward Said and bell hooks
24. Lani Guinier and Tim Wu

 

Chapter Eleven

25. Giambattista Vico and Denis Diderot
26. Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Hilary Mantel

 

Chapter Twelve

27. Jill Lepore and Yuval Harari
28. Walter Isaacson and Richard Cohen
29. Robert A. Caro and Doris Kearns Goodwin

 

Arts—Music, Dance, Art & Architecture, Theatre, Film

 

Chapter Thirteen

30. Leontyne Price and Leonard Bernstein Rob Kapilow
31. Robert Shaw and John Eliot Gardiner
32. Jacques d’Amboise and Twyla Tharp

 

Chapter Fourteen

33. Bruce Adolphe and Fred Child
34. Vincent Scully and E. H. Gombrich
35. Elliot Eisner and Rob Kapilow

 

Chapter Fifteen

36. William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw
37. Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler
38. David Mamet and August Wilson

 

Chapter Sixteen

39. Peter Brook and Richard Taruskin
40. Sir Ken Robinson and A. O. Scott

 

PART TWO:  Sciences +

 

Math and Medicine

 

Chapter One

1. Leonhardt Euler, G. H. Hardy & Srinivasa Ramanujan
2. Eugenia Cheng and Steven Strogatz
3. Paul Lockhart and Eric Mazur

 

Chapter Two

4. Richard Selzer and Paul Farmer
5. Oliver Sacks and Robert Coles

 

Chapter Three

6. Lewis Thomas and Atul Gawande
7. Danielle Ofri and Perri Klass
8. Jerome Groopman and Averroes

 

Sciences, Natural and Social

 

Chapter Four

9. Richard Feynman and Edward Tufte
10. Carl Sagan and Stuart Firestein

 

Chapter Five

11. E. O. Wilson and Stephen Jay Gould
12. Brian Greene and Alan Lightman

 

Chapter Six

13. Dan Ariely and Robert Frank
14. Gregory Bateson and Clifford Geertz

 

Chapter Seven

15. Daniel Kahneman and Howard Gardner
16. Alison Gopnik and Paul Bloom

 

Education, Theory and Practice

 

Chapter Eight

17. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Friedrich Froebel
18. Elizabeth Peabody and Mary McLeod Bethune

 

Chapter Nine

19. Gabriela Mistral and Jaime Escalante
20. Carol Dweck and Peter Johnston

 

Chapter Ten

21. Robert Scholes and Michael Sandel
22. Theodore Hesburgh and Ruth Simmons

 

Chapter Eleven

23. John Holt and Hope Jahren
24. A. S. Neill and Joseph Albers

 

Chapter Twelve

25. Carl Rogers and Fred Rogers
26. Robert Maynard Hutchins and Roosevelt Montás

 

Chapter Thirteen

27. Benjamin Bloom and Lawrence Cremin
28. Linda Darling-Hammond and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

 

Potpourri—Sports, Self-Help, Magic, Floral Arranging, Hospitality & Gastronomy, Creativity, Commentary

 

Chapter Fourteen

29. John Madden and Bob Costas
30. Timothy Gallwey and Brené Brown

 

Chapter Fifteen

31. Harry Houdini and Ricky Jay
32. Gregor Lersch & Klaus Wagener and Ella Lawton Grant Campbell

 

Chapter Sixteen

33. Conrad Hilton and Danny Meyer
34. M. F. K. Fisher and Pauline Kael

 

Chapter Seventeen

35. Adam Grant and Michael Michalko
36. Thomas Friedman and David Brooks

 

Notes

 

Coda: Master Mentors & Teaching Credo

Epilogue: Family Mentors—Edward S. DiYanni and Mary H. DiYanni

 

Appendix A: My Influential Teachers and Mentors

Appendix B: Teaching and Learning with Colleagues and Friends

 

References

 

 

Preface

 

Each of us can learn from the world’s masters—past, present, and future. The most important thing we can learn from them may well be how to become better learners ourselves and better enablers of others’ learning as well. 

We learn as we have been taught. We become what our teachers make of us—all those from whom we have learned, ourselves included. Who we learn from, how we learn from them, and what we learn count immeasurably. They count because, to a large extent, because we are what we learn. 

We become what we learn. It makes us who we are. 

The best masters inspire as well as instruct; they encourage and motivate us. We learn from their ideas and their ideals, from their principles and their practices. We learn, too, from their character, from their lives, from their actions, from what they commit themselves to and what they stand for, as they teach by living example. 

For these masters, I consider briefly why they taught—what motivated them—along with how they taught—their teaching methods and practices. I consider, too, something of what we learn from them, providing an exposition of key ideas and values, accompanied by brief excerpts from their sayings and writings. 

Not all the figures I discuss devoted their lives to conveying knowledge, though many did. Some were reformers; others developed philosophical and psychological perspectives, created practical strategies for learning, or formulated designs with implications for instructional policy and practice. Still others used multiple technologies—television, film, websites, print and digital magazines, video games, and more to reach audiences of millions, as have Tim Gunn, Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, Sal Khan, and George Lucas, for example.

Over the years I have often wondered what it takes to become a master teacher, a teaching master. What makes a great teacher, a master teacher? What does it take to reach a level of art and craft such that teaching seems as natural as breathing? 

I believe that the following considerations about mastering the art of teaching—becoming a master—apply across the board. They are relevant to mastering any art or craft, from cooking to broadcasting, from music and dance to medicine and engineering—across a multitude of disciplines, including literature and the rhetoric, the visual and performing arts, mathematics and philosophy, history and religion, and beyond.

Master educators, teachers and mentors of every type and stripe, continue to grow as individuals and as members of various academic, social, intellectual, teaching and learning communities. They remain curious, inquiring into all manner of subjects and disciplines, not just their own disciplines and specialties (though without neglecting those either—keeping up their disciplinary “chops”). 

Masters sustain their passion for creating memorable experiences for their students. They identify and amplify the extra value they add to their students’ learning.  

Masters demonstrate and model. They explain and explore. They engage their followers dialectically in dynamic interplay, teacher influencing student and student influencing teacher. And they do these things consummately well. 

But masters also incite and excite those they instruct. They arouse their students’ curiosity. They set minds aflame and hearts ablaze. Master teachers release their students’ imaginations. They inspire and summon their students to mystery and initiate them into the glories of learning.

Masters stretch their students, pitching lessons just beyond their reach, arousing their effort and will, so that their students are able to do things they had no idea they could. Great teachers enable students to do things they cannot do themselves.  

Masters awaken their followers’ powers and dreams, while inducing in them a love for what they love. Masters help others discover what they truly love themselves. As George Steiner has suggested, master teachers school their students for departure under their newfound powers (102).

In The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery, Adam Gopnik suggests that there is something magical about mastery, which involves accomplishment through accumulated practice, a summation of traditions of practice. Mastery of any art or craft, Gopnik suggests, grows out of generating flow from learned fragments, creating smooth fluency from sequences of small steps. He suggests, as well, that mastery “involves everything we do” and “engages the totality of ourselves.” Mastery is more than having acquired fluency with a discrete set of skills; rather, it shows forth “a unique human presence.” Master teachers, like other masters of their craft and art, “are not mere repositories of knowledge, but exemplars of a practice” (8-10), a practice that has become fully realized, embodied, and ensouled in the master teacher. Gopnik suggests, further, that mastery needs to be demonstrated in performance, fulfilled in practice, accepting the challenge courageously, what he calls “catching the bullet” (201-205). The final mystery of mastery is that the master takes the plunge, leaps into the unknown, accepts the risks, whatever they may be, and in the process, shows how it’s done. 

In Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel explains how the master teacher remains always with the student, even as the student becomes proficient at what is being learned—archery, swordsmanship, calligraphy, science, history, music, interpreting literature, analyzing art, developing writing and thinking skills and every other skill imaginable. The physical teacher disappears, but the teacher’s spirit remains, as “teacher and pupil are no longer two persons, but one” (65). It’s a stage of learning where the pupil subsumes the teacher.

The way to become a master teacher, to master the art of teaching, is to never cease to be responsive to its enticements, to remain always a student of its mysteries. These are the mastery goals towards which all educators of whatevery type—and all masters, too, I believe, should aspire. In achieving these goals each of us can be, in George Steiner’s words, an “accomplice to transcendent possibility” (Lessons of the Masters 102).

Each chapter segment of Provocative Pairs includes two master influencers. I introduce the book with segments on Socrates and Leonardo da Vinci, Socrates as the West’s first great, influential thinker, and Leonardo as its supreme artist/scientist, gifted across many domains. Each chapter segment provides brief biographical notes about the figures, highlighting educational aspects of their lives. Each considers on one or more key educational element, including comments and quoted passages from each master’s works. 

But why two figures per chapter? Why pair up the masters? Because doing so offers the opportunity for comparison and contrast—for examining relationships and discontinuities. Considering one master in light of another sharpens our understanding of both.

In Powers of Two, Joshua Shenk argues that two is the ideal number for all kinds of creative partnerships—from composing and performing songs, writing books and making movies and television shows, to inventing things (xvi-xxv). Some examples: Wilbur and Orville Wright, Vincent and Theo van Gogh, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. In science, Watson and Crick and their double helix (overlooking, sadly, the contributions of Rosalind Franklin). In technology, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as competitors, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as collaborators. In politics, Ralph Abernethy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and a century earlier, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. In psychology, Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung. In sports, Chrissy Everett and Martina Navratilova, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, Micky Mantle and Roger Maris, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal (and later Novak Djokovic). And a few from the world of comedy: Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Jackie Gleason and Art Carney, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, to cite a few additional notable ones. 

Examples from literature include the creative pairings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Dorothy and William Wordsworth, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, Thomas Wolfe and his editor Maxwell Perkins, Ahab and Moby-Dick, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale (and Roger Chillingworth). And in more popular genres, Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, as well as Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort.

Shenk contends, rightly I think, that some creative collaborations derive from and thrive on a kind of psychic convergence, a compatibility of personality and thinking style. In such cases the cognitive frameworks of the creative pairs match. Other creative pairs work more by opposition and contestation, via competition rather than compatibility and cooperation. These adversarial creative pairs rival one another, motivating progress and perseverance, even inspiration resulting in a productive competitive rivalry. The competitive rivalries exhibit cognitive independence that pushes the creative rivals in their individually successful directions; the collaborative relationships exhibit cognitive interdependence, which fuels their joint artistic successes. Some creative pairs exhibit both tendencies—collaborative convergence and creative dissonance—John Lennon and Paul McCartney providing a notable instance.

Every chapter segment of Provocative Pairs concludes with considerations about learning inspired by the world’s masters paired. Most summarize key influential practices of the chapters’ subjects—Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton, Grace Hopper and Steve Jobs, I. M. Pei and Maya Lin, James Beard and Julia Child, Vince Lombardi and Phil Jackson, Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee, Conrad Hilton and Danny Meyer, Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey, to cite a few. Others emerge in imaginary dialogues between, for example, Plato and Aristotle, Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, Sylvia Ashton-Warner and Paolo Freire, Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sal Kahn and George Lucas, among many others. 

The considerations for learning I offer reflect my educational ideas refracted through the lenses of the world’s masters Throughout, ancient wisdom and modern ideas about learning coalesce in contemporary practice. I have kept the chapter sections short; each provides a brief overview of paired masters’ lives and work along with a taste of their practice. Collectively, the chapters present a smorgasbord of appetizing morsels to sample and savor. Taken together as well—and to shift the metaphor—the chapters invite you on an educational journey through the centuries and across disciplines and cultures. 

My goal is to help curious, interested readers, like you, with whatever kinds of teaching and learning they engage in, however informal they may be. I illustrate with precept and example how you can become a better learner through developing skills and benefiting from the approaches of master thinkers through the centuries and around the world.

I envision my companion volumes as a way to help you and other readers get started (or re-started) developing their learning skills and expanding their knowledge. I hope to help each of you consolidate and extend your knowledge of what you learn, how you learn it, and why it matters. And I hope to help each of you engage more effectively in productive learning experiences.

Learning has always mattered, and it matters today and the years to come, I believe, more than ever. That’s why learning from and with the world’s great master thinkers is so important. The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of students, but it has not destroyed their ability to learn. And Generative AI in the form of ChatGPT and other tools will continue tempting students to let bots do their thinking for them. But doing so will limit their intellectual development. I firmly believe that Provocative Pairs—Learning with The World’s Masters can contribute meaningfully to a renewed commitment to the successful learning of us all.