To list the various categories that one can be "educated" in...
- Math --- dozens of subcategories here
- Physical Science --- dozens of subcategories here
- Linguistics --- hundreds of subcategories here
- History --- literal and fictional subcategories here
- Economics --- dozens
I was just talking to a math teacher yesterday. I think part of the problem is that each teacher gets caught up in their own specialty and tries to affect the perspective of the student. That may be fine in college but not so good in grade school and high school. I confess that my own thinking was affected by starting to read science fiction in grade school. That altered my perspective on everything my teachers were saying from 5th grade on.
I can suggest two related science fiction stories that present ideas and information about all five subjects listed above:
1632 (Ring of Fire)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1632_series
1632 can be downloaded for free:
http://www.baen.com/1632.html
1636: The Kremlin Games (The Ring of Fire)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1636:_The_Kremlin_Games
This is a strange time travel story where a West Virginia town of hillbilly coal miners is transported back in time to Germany in the year 1631. That was the middle of what Europeans call The Thirty Years War. The second book has one of the hillbillies going to Moscow and changing Russian history. Off hand this sounds rather silly but it is interesting in terms of the technological and cultural clashes. There is a Black doctor from Chicago and his daughter in the story. Modern White writers have to have diversity. LOL
Before I read this series I could not have told you if Galileo and Oliver Cromwell had lived at the same time. They did, Cromwell was in his 30s and Galileo in his 70s. The Thirty Years War was a big deal in European history though it is just another old war to us. Unless someone is really interested in European history the "education" on the subject won't make much impression. But this strange story shows how ideas from the future would change things like the economy of Russia. Standard education does not show how much things interrelate.
This also shows the influence of Aristotle on European intellectuals and serfdom and slavery in Russia.
This book has a Rah, Rah, America jingoist tone to it that turns some people off but I view it as part of the learning experience, in that it educates the reader about how some people actually think and how some readers might be influenced.
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