Chapter 16: The significance of geography and history

"...the reach of imagination in realizing connections is inexhaustible" (p. 170).

Dewey makes an interesting case for the study of history and especially for geography for our time in which one is routinely given short shrift and the other has been driven almost entirely out of our curriculum--especially in comparison with science and math. Dewey goes beyond the simple case that "knowledge of the past is the key to understanding the present" (p. 175), and helps to explain how history is the study of the association of people, augmented by geography as the study of their association with the natural world (rivers and mountains, weather and climate, etc.). This chapter makes me wonder about the advisability of giving preference in curriculum to science over history including geography. Which of these will inform most students in ways they will be able to apply in their own lives? Is it more important to understand how a nuclear reactor works? Or, is it more essential to understand why those in a nation might want to acquire nuclear force? Is it more important to understand the causes of global warming, or to appreciate how climate changes tend to affect the human race. I'm not suggesting science should be discarded from the curriculum, but I am questioning whether science can be understood without historical context.