I am a wild animal, not an animal trainer

“I am a wild animal, not an animal trainer” is Jan Liseiwicz’s declaration of a teaching philosophy built on pursuit rather than instruction. At the beginning of each academic year, he told new students that he would chase them through the mountains and forests of mathematics: they had to run ahead, keep moving through difficulty, and eventually either fall behind or escape his reach. The image makes intellectual independence the test of the teacher-student relationship—and turns that relationship into a challenge with a deliberately uncertain end.

The Wild Animal and the Student

Jan Liseiwicz began his first class each year with the same message, delivered in what the narrator describes as a strange mixture of Chinese and English. He was not an animal trainer who would tame students or lead them along a safe route; he was a wild animal who would pursue them. The students, in turn, had to do their utmost to run ahead of him. The faster they ran, the faster he would follow; if they slowed down, he would slow down too. Whatever difficulties arose, they must keep running.

His terms for ending the relationship sharpened the metaphor into a pair of opposing outcomes. If a student stopped running, Jan Liseiwicz had given up on that student. If the student ran so far into the woods that Jan Liseiwicz could no longer see them, the student had set themself free. The same pursuit could therefore signify either the teacher’s continued investment or the student’s independence. Freedom was not granted in advance: it had to be achieved by moving beyond the reach of the person who had set the pace.

A Challenge Written on the Blackboard

The metaphor had a practical counterpart in Jan Liseiwicz’s classroom. At the start of each term, in the first class, he wrote a difficult equation in the upper-right corner of the blackboard. A student who solved it received a grade of 100 per cent and could attend the rest of the term’s classes only if they wished. In this arrangement, solving the equation did more than demonstrate competence: it immediately changed the student’s obligation to the teacher.

Jan Liseiwicz then wrote another equation in the same place and waited for someone else to solve it. A student who solved three equations in succession faced a further, individual problem, which served as a graduation thesis. Solving that problem meant graduating with top marks, even if the student had attended the university for only a couple of days. The sequence turned the classroom into a set of escalating tests, but also made its exit conditions unusually plain: exceptional work could release a student from routine attendance and, ultimately, complete their studies.

A Creed Tested by Its Results

The rules made escape possible in principle, not easy in practice. By the time Jan Liseiwicz had been teaching for nearly ten years, no student had come close to completing the full sequence. Solving one or two of his equations was already considered remarkable. The gap between the promise of freedom and the rarity of attaining it gives the wild-animal image its tension: students were invited to outrun their teacher, yet the standard demanded to do so was formidable.

The declaration also fits a wider account of Jan Liseiwicz’s instruction. His classes required students to think rather than rely on complete explanations: he sometimes posed only half a problem or gave part of it incorrectly, and might not correct it on the same occasion. He described his preference for a stimulating but mistaken theory over a dull, flawless proof. Against that background, the wild animal is not simply a figure for severity. It names a method of pressure intended to force students to imagine, reason, and continue without waiting to be led.