When Science Took to the Stage—and Broke into Song!

 

When Science Took to the Stage—and Broke into Song!

Some reflections on teaching, storytelling, and breaking the monotony of the classroom

The other day, while browsing through YouTube, I came across something that took me back several years. It was an old Doordarshan science series called Kuch Tukke Kuch Teer, in which I had been involved in a few episodes. Watching those familiar scenes, I was reminded of the excitement of trying to bring scientific discoveries alive through drama, rather than merely describing them in a classroom.

And that set me thinking about something that had occupied my mind throughout my teaching career. How does one keep a class engaged? Not merely long enough for students to absorb what is being taught, but sufficiently interested that they look forward to coming back for the next class.

I must admit that I had a considerable advantage. Most of my teaching was to relatively small classes, where one could interact with students almost individually. One could ask questions, provoke discussions, try something unconventional, and, perhaps most importantly, observe whether the experiment was working! A puzzled expression, a smile, or a sudden burst of conversation could tell you much more than the silence of a lecture hall.

I have always felt that teaching is not merely about conveying information. It is also about arousing curiosity, occasionally surprising students, and finding ways to make them think beyond what is written in their textbooks.

The YouTube discovery brought back memories of two rather unusual books I had encountered years ago in my father's collection. Both had fascinated me, because their authors had independently arrived at a similar conclusion: when conventional lectures begin to lose their audience, perhaps it is time to try something quite different.

One decided to bring dead scientists back to life. The other decided that biochemistry might be better understood if it could be sung!

When William Harvey walked into a Berkeley classroom

The first book is Great Scientists Speak Again, published in 1975 by Richard M. Eakin, Professor of Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley.

It is a delightful little book, but what makes it particularly interesting is the story behind its creation.

In the late 1960s, students at Berkeley were questioning established institutions, and university teaching was not exempt from criticism. Traditional lectures were coming under fire.

Eakin noticed something troubling in his introductory general biology course, Zoology 10. Attendance was declining, and students seemed increasingly inattentive. Something had to be done to recapture their interest.

His solution came, rather unexpectedly, one morning in the shower!

Why not dress up as some of the great biologists of the past and allow them to tell their own stories? Instead of lecturing about William Harvey or Charles Darwin, why not let Harvey and Darwin themselves walk into the classroom and describe their discoveries?

More importantly, Eakin wanted to present these scientists not merely as names associated with great discoveries, but as human beings—with ambitions, frustrations, failures, triumphs, and their share of weaknesses.

It was a wonderful idea. There was just one small difficulty. Eakin had no formal training in dramatic art!

Undeterred, and with help from friends and colleagues, he began experimenting with costumes, makeup, dialogue, and props.

One fine morning, students attending their usual biology lecture were greeted by an unexpected visitor. Standing before them was William Harvey, the seventeenth-century English physician who had demonstrated the circulation of blood.

Or rather, it was Professor Eakin, wearing a wig and Elizabethan costume, pretending to be Harvey!

He had brought along a heart and a pitcher of tomato juice to represent blood. With these rather modest props, he proceeded to explain how Harvey had challenged prevailing beliefs and demonstrated that the heart acted as a pump, driving blood continuously through the body.

Imagine the surprise of those students. They had come expecting another lecture on animal biology and found themselves transported several centuries into the past.

The performance was a tremendous success.

Encouraged, Eakin expanded his repertoire. Gregor Mendel appeared to explain inheritance, Charles Darwin discussed evolution, Louis Pasteur spoke about microorganisms, William Beaumont described his extraordinary investigations of digestion, and Hans Spemann introduced the mysteries of embryonic development.

The classroom had become a stage, and the history of biology was unfolding before the students.

Eakin's performances became enormously popular. News of his unusual teaching method spread, and invitations followed from other institutions. Eventually, he brought together these dramatic lectures in Great Scientists Speak Again, complete with illustrations and photographs of the scientist-actors in action.

What I find particularly appealing is that Eakin was not simply trying to entertain his students. He was trying to make them appreciate how scientific knowledge emerges from questions, doubts, experiments, and sometimes prolonged struggles.

The discoveries were important, of course. But so were the people behind them.

And perhaps that is what makes his book worth reading even today.

When biochemistry became a song

The second book from my father's collection took an entirely different route.

It was The Biochemists' Songbook by Harold Baum, first published in 1982. Baum was a biochemist and teacher associated with Chelsea College, University of London.

Now, anyone who has taught biochemistry will appreciate the challenge of explaining metabolic pathways. The glycolytic pathway, the tricarboxylic acid cycle, fatty acid oxidation, enzyme kinetics—each brings with it a bewildering collection of enzymes, substrates, intermediates, and regulatory mechanisms.

One can almost see students struggling to remember which molecule becomes what, and which enzyme is responsible for the transformation!

Baum had a rather unusual solution. Why not put biochemistry to music?

He wrote songs about biochemical pathways, setting the words to familiar tunes. Thus, students could have fun singing their way through complicated reactions instead of merely memorising them.

There was The Michaelis Anthem, set to the tune of The Red Flag, explaining enzyme kinetics. There were songs about glycolysis, the TCA cycle, photosynthesis, fatty acid metabolism, and even protein biosynthesis.

The book also contains a foreword by none other than Sir Hans Krebs. There is something wonderfully amusing about imagining the great Krebs endorsing the idea of singing about metabolic pathways!

Baum's songs were not necessarily written as a substitute for classroom lectures. They emerged partly from the convivial atmosphere of academic gatherings, where scientists might be persuaded to sing about their favourite biochemical reactions—particularly around Christmas, and perhaps with a little alcohol helping to overcome their musical inhibitions!

But beneath the humour lay a serious possibility. If music could help people remember words and stories, why not complicated biochemical pathways?

One of the longest compositions dealt with protein biosynthesis and was set to the familiar tune of My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.

Apparently, the song was sufficiently long and demanding to inspire a student's humorous response. After struggling through the biochemical saga, the student pleaded:

Oh golly, that was a long saga,

Oh gosh, how the scansion was strained.

I just sung this song to my Bonnie,

And no wonder my Bonnie looks pained.

Bring back, oh bring back, Oh bring back my textbook to me, to me;

Bring back, oh bring back, plain simple biochemistry.

I find that response particularly delightful. After all, students have always had their own ways of evaluating their teachers' innovations!

I also remember that recordings of some of these biochemical songs became available. One could actually listen to metabolism being sung.

Whether singing a pathway would help every student remember it is debatable. But I can certainly imagine how a few minutes of such musical intervention might break the monotony of a long lecture.

More importantly, Baum showed that even a subject as seemingly forbidding as biochemistry could be approached with humour and imagination.

After all, who decided that science must always be taught with a solemn face?

Kuch Tukke Kuch Teer: Bringing experiments to life

This brings me back to the YouTube videos that started this journey down memory lane.

Years ago, Vigyan Prasar, an organisation devoted to science communication in India, produced a television series for Doordarshan called Kuch Tukke Kuch Teer, with the subtitle Prayog Jinhone Duniya Badal Di—experiments that changed the world.

The idea was simple but appealing. Instead of merely explaining important discoveries, why not recreate some of the circumstances and experiments that led to them?

The series explored landmark events in the history of science through dramatised presentations, attempting to capture not only the discoveries themselves but also the questions and circumstances that made them possible.

I had the opportunity to be associated with a few episodes, and some of the filming took place in our department at the University of Delhi South Campus.

One concerned Thomas Hunt Morgan's experiments with Drosophila, the humble fruit fly that helped establish the chromosomal basis of inheritance. Another dealt with the discovery of blood groups, one of those remarkable advances that transformed the practice of medicine.

We also had the opportunity to recreate some of Louis Pasteur's experiments, which was an especially interesting experience. Here was a chance not only to dramatise how Pasteur had approached some of the fundamental questions of microbiology, but also to repeat some of those experiments in a modern laboratory setting. It was fascinating to revisit experiments performed more than a century earlier.  It was one thing to read about Pasteur's work in textbooks, and quite another to attempt to reproduce the experiments ourselves, while also presenting the story of how they came about.

In a classroom, we often begin with the conclusion: genes are located on chromosomes, blood can be classified into different groups, microorganisms are responsible for many processes previously attributed to spontaneous generation, or particular experiments established a fundamental biological principle.

But that is not how science actually happened.

Morgan did not begin his experiments knowing precisely what his fruit flies would reveal. Nor did Karl Landsteiner begin with the familiar ABO blood-group table that students learn today. Pasteur, too, had to devise ingenious experiments to test ideas that were fiercely debated in his time. They began with observations, puzzles, and questions whose answers were far from obvious.

The television series tried to bring out this spirit of discovery.

And that, to me, was its greatest strength.

Of course, Kuch Tukke Kuch Teer was not limited to these episodes. A whole series of programmes was produced, recreating experiments and discoveries from different areas of science. Several of these episodes are now available on YouTube, providing an opportunity for students and teachers to revisit these remarkable stories.

Watching some of those episodes again after so many years was a delightful experience. The production methods may appear rather modest by today's standards, but the underlying approach remains as relevant as ever.

I was also pleased to discover that these programmes have found a new home on YouTube. What was once broadcast on television can now be discovered by another generation of curious students.

A classroom need not always be a classroom!!!

Looking back, I find an interesting connection between Eakin's theatrical impersonations, Baum's biochemical songs, and our own attempts to recreate scientific discoveries for television.

The approaches were different, but the motivation was much the same.

How does one make science engaging without sacrificing its substance?

Eakin used costumes and dramatic monologues. Baum used familiar tunes and irreverent lyrics. Kuch Tukke Kuch Teer used historical reconstruction and television.

Each recognised that science has a human side, and that learning need not always follow the same predictable route.

Today, teachers have access to an extraordinary range of tools—animations, videos, simulations, interactive presentations, and now artificial intelligence. Some of the things that once required elaborate arrangements can be created with astonishing ease.

Yet the central challenge remains unchanged.

A beautifully animated lecture can be just as monotonous as one delivered with chalk and a blackboard. Technology by itself does not guarantee curiosity or attention.

What matters is what a teacher chooses to do with it.

I often think that students remember not only what we taught them, but also the unexpected moments in our classes. A question that made them think, an experiment that did not behave as expected, an amusing story about a scientist, or an unconventional way of explaining a difficult concept.

Perhaps a little theatrical performance, a song, an anecdote, or simply an unexpected question can sometimes achieve what another twenty slides cannot.

Of course, not every teacher needs to dress up as Darwin or sing the Krebs cycle. Nor would every student welcome such an experiment—Baum's unfortunate student certainly had reservations!

But there is something to be said for occasionally stepping away from the familiar.

Those two books from my father's library, and the rediscovery of Kuch Tukke Kuch Teer, have reminded me that teachers have been experimenting with unconventional ways of teaching for generations.

Long before we began talking about innovative pedagogy and technology-enabled classrooms, there were people willing to put on a wig, pick up a musical score, or turn an experimental discovery into a little drama.

And perhaps the lesson is quite simple.

A good class should not merely leave students knowing something they did not know before. It should also leave them curious about what comes next.

That, I suppose, is what keeps them coming back.