When I was at university, we had a successful teacher. He would lecture; calm, commanding, persuasive. He would lecture and lecture. Then he would stop, look at the class and ask:
“Do you believe?”
In those years, I could not make sense of this question. Science was being explained, there was data, there were sources... What did it mean to believe? Today, as a lecturer who teaches medical students, I realize that that question was not probing the accuracy of the information, but our way of thinking.
Because we come not by learning to relate to knowledge, but by learning to adapt to knowledge. The truth is often defined from the beginning: what the teacher says, what the book says, what everyone knows.
We do not learn to ask where knowledge comes from, how it is produced and under what conditions it is valid. We are not raised with that consciousness of questioning.
This is the picture I saw in the classroom today. Students are smart, hardworking, fast. They take in information, organize it, transfer it. But rarely do they get questions like: “Is it always like this?”, “In what situation does it not work?”, “Where is the limit to this result?” But science does not start with answers. Science first asks questions and then tests them.
This is not only a university issue. From childhood we grow up with an oppressive and traditional language of authority. “Don't talk too much” at home, “don't prolong it” at school, “it would be shameful” in society, the message is clear: Question is risky, compliance is safe. In such a culture, curiosity is not protected; it is discouraged. Doubt is considered a problem, not a virtue.
Then these children come to university. They know a lot, but they find it difficult to test their knowledge. Criticism and disrespect, suspicion and disobedience are mixed together. However, science is only possible with a mind that can make this distinction. Curiosity begets the question, doubt disciplines that question. Without both, there is knowledge but no science.
Perhaps the answer to the question “why can't we permanently rank among the best universities in the world?” lies right here. When the university cannot be a place where objection is legitimate; when the student cannot ask the professor, the young academic cannot ask the lecturer “could there be another possibility?”, knowledge multiplies but thought does not deepen.
That teacher's question still haunts me today:
“Do you believe?”
So he was asking:
Have you memorized it or have you thought about it?
Science teaches to question, not to believe.
Where people are not raised with the consciousness of questioning, knowledge increases, but science does not progress.