Science Education

An Urgent Consideration

The revival of classical education has done much for philosophy, theology, literature, and possibly math, history, art, and music. It has done almost nothing for science, using an approach focused on history, which is dangerously off-topic. Would you try to learn the history of bread-making without making a loaf?

Homeschoolers and the classically educated are acquiring a reputation of scientific ignorance. We are not wise to let this happen and St. Albertus Magnus would not have tolerated it.

This essay describes — and opposes — the negative view of the sciences espoused by many classical educators in the early 21st century.

The common situation is that classically educated students remain scientifically illiterate until very late in their education, sometimes permanently. The attitude of certain classicists is an intractable combination of indifference, suspicion, and backwardness in peculiar contrast to their maturity at the philosophical end of the syllabus.

In any case, none of the scientists of ancient times, even those whose work is included in the classical syllabus, would have chosen ignorance over information in their approach to the sciences...

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Here is a suggestion for those who are motivated to depart from the standard

High School curriculum of general science followed by biology, chemistry, and physics. I think some kind of departure is necessary because these courses, as presently offered from the secular press, have many flaws.

Classical educators are skimping on the sciences and taking the position of despising them as if the fields themselves were responsible for the moral wasteland of the textbooks and the times. Meantime, wonderful accounts of scientific sleuthing and its fascinating achievements are to be found in the trade books (as opposed to textbooks) in every field. These accounts are sometimes full of joy and the spirit of poetry.

There are specific text requirements for professionals in a field, but the pursuit of a curiosity that rounds our cosmology is the more fundamental assignment — and the only one for those who will specialize outside the fields of the natural sciences...

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