Everything is Illuminated, The story of Big History by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Part of the problem getting Big History adopted in more schools is that few schools have teachers willing or able to instruct a hybrid course. Some schools assigned a history teacher and a science teacher to team up and teach the course. They also gave them a good deal of time in the summer to get ready. Gates is also a polarizing figure in education due to the fact that his foundation has spent more than $200 million to advocate for the Common Core.
These standards have engendered public anger on both the right and the left, and two states have repealed them altogether. Gates’ team is also accused of working around teachers rather than working with them, and many fear that the goal of the foundation is to reduce teachers to test scores. It does seem that people far away from education are having an outsized influence. Many are skeptical of what seems to be “Bill Gates’s History.”

In spite of the resistance and logistical problems, Big History may become a successor to Western Civ and World History. It is already being offered in South Korea, the Netherlands, and David Christian’s home country of Australia. It’s not hard to find students in American schools that offer the course saying that they hate science but have grown to like this class. At the same time critics say that at points it becomes less history and more biology and physics. As such, it loses the compelling aspect that is at the heart of history. Others see the current world history courses as little more than “fact soup.” It is often a flawed course that doesn’t give kids a sense of global history.
In many ways, the author sees education as a “lousy business” with most teachers working for less than they could make elsewhere, and students who for the most part would rather be somewhere else. It is hard, however, to think that Bill Gates has an agenda other than trying to improve education. Big History could be nothing more than the history course that Gates wishes he took in high school when he wasn’t a billionaire. I wish I took it in high school too, and I hope that Bill’s inspiration leads to something very big.

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