Yesterday my kids and I were learning about the discovery of the telescope with some books as well as a wonderful BBC documentary series called “What The Tudors Did For Us.” Among the many other fascinating inventions we learned about, it turns out that the telescope was invented and used first in England during the 1500’s by Leonard Digges.
This clashed with my memories from high school science class (and college after that). We learned that Hans Lippershey, a German-Dutch spectacle maker made the first telescope in the 1600’s. I went back and looked through my old texts, as well as Wikipedia, and discovered I had remembered correctly.
And yet there remained a pesky bit of evidence in the form of texts written during the 1500’s in Tudor England that describe the design and function, a sort of a user’s manual, for a telescope that was actually built and used during that time period.
So why did the Tudors not proclaim this invention as theirs? Well at the time it is likely that as the telescope was used for spotting the activities of enemy at far distances, the Tudors would not want anyone to know. In a sense the telescope was a stealth weapon in their arsenal, somewhat like our air force jets with radar flummoxing designs. Why would we tell our enemies that we had an advantage?
But it is centuries and centuries since the invention of the telescope, so why doesn’t someone set the record straight?
And, what do you do when you have taught your child diligently, filled their head with primary source information, worked for many, many years to teach them the truth about everything, and then they go to take a SAT or ACT or AP exam to prepare for college entrance only to find that the truth is not what is tested. From what I have seen so far, this disparity between the truth and what is tested grows even larger through the implementation of Common Core.
What is the purpose of memorizing gobs of facts, many of which are not correct in the first place? Does this teach children how to reason and learn and think for themselves? Or have we just created a false world in which the walls separating us from the truth are thin and shatter if we begin to think for ourselves and investigate on our own? Those who dutifully absorb what conventional educational curriculum tells them without questioning or investigating may succeed in college, but they are simply being taught to be good little worker bees for others who will pull their puppet strings.
Do you really want that for your child?
What is more important: knowing truth, or testing well?