Oregon Live – Claudia Rowe
“So with Big History, all course subjects essentially become one: the history of everything. The course starts with the Big Bang and rolls forward at a blistering pace, taking in many decades or even epochs in a single class period. Big History, Christian wrote, is “a wonderful way of getting a sense of our place in the overall scheme of things, according to the best available scientific knowledge.” “Big history tries to look at the past on all scales, from those of conventional history up to those of cosmology,” he says. Bill Gates, for one, is sold on the approach. The billionaire Microsoft co-founder happened to catch Christian’s Big History DVD series while on his treadmill one morning and was riveted by the charismatic professor. “I just loved it,” he told the New York Times last fall. “It was very clarifying for me. I thought, ‘God, everybody should watch this thing!'” More than that, he concluded that every high-school student should learn this way. He decided to fund Christian’s vision, committing $10 million for course development, teacher training and a push to get the approach into American high schools.”(more)