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Einstein Sobre El Arte Del Maestro
Einstein Sobre El Arte Del Maestro
Einstein Sobre El Arte Del Maestro
Translation
of the quotation on a plaque in the astronomy building of Pasadena City College (the German
inscription reads “Es ist die wichtigste Kunst des Lehrers, die Freude am Schaffen und am
Erkennen zu wecken”). Einstein dedicated the building and its observatory on February 26, On
Education, Students, Academic Freedom 101 1931, with a short speech, and also contributed the
above words to be inscribed on the small bronze dedicatory plaque inside the building. The
elaborate ceremony was attended by most Pasadena schoolchildren as well. See Pasadena Star
News, February 26, 1931, and Pasadena Chronicle, February 27, 1931 (thanks to Dan Haley,
Shelley Erwin, and Mane Hakopyan of PCC for these references and copies of the articles). It is not
clear if these words are original to Einstein, as Dan Haley, research librarian at Pasadena City
College, found a similar statement written by Anatole France in The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard,
part 2, chapter 4: “The art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young
minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards,” which, I discovered, dates back to 1881. No
doubt other people have had the same thought through the centuries and the concept is not original
to France, either. This sentence is also used as the epigram in Mein Weltbild (1934), 25, in the
reprinting of Einstein’s dedication speech; here it is also not clear if these words are Einstein’s own
or if he is using an unsourced quotation by someone else, but my feeling is they are his own. See
also the next quotation, written three years later