Naturalist

My recent bedtime reading was Economic Naturalist by Robert Frank. It was, in fact, my birthday gift last year from my sister Jenny.

The origin of this book is in itself remarkable. It was not intentionally written by this Professor of Economics from Cornell; it represents a collection of his classroom assignment. In short, each student was asked to pose an interesting question from their observations in daily life, and then write a 500-word narrative to explain the phenomenon by some economic principle.

And, this book is the collection of all those interesting questions - with answers mostly re-written by the author himself.

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While I was considering how Robert Frank taught his students economic principles by asking them to tell stories, I suddenly came to realize we are doing a similar kind of thing during bedside clinical teaching. We ask medical students to present history and physical findings.

And, there may be good reasons why our undergraduates don't like it - the narrative theory of learning is only meant for adults.

PS. Many of you may know each of our third-year student needs to submit a few case histories, summarizing the patients that they have seen. One of the two most common reasons that I put down when I fail a student in this assessment is Fail to tell a coherent story.

Oh, the other is Fail to exercise common sense.