Education

The Scientific Revolution in 90 Minutes

By Anthony Rebora — November 17, 2009 1 min read
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Mei Flower thinks the world history curriculum she has to teach moves just a little too quickly:

For example, we are currently studying the Enlightenment, and our most recent section dealt with the Scientific Revolution. In 90 minutes, I had to talk about Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, Newton, some guy who invented trigonometry, another guy who made advances in anatomy by dissecting human bodies, yet another guy who invented the decimal system, some guy who's the father of modern chemistry, a woman who wrote a book, Francis Bacon, the scientific method and Descartes. DESCARTES.

Well, good thing the Enlightenment wasn’t all that important. ... Seriously, are there people out there running schools or education policy who don’t think this sort of thing is a travesty?

A version of this news article first appeared in the Blogboard blog.