Science and History

The Nuffield Junior Science project team wrote this book to highlight the benefits in primary schools that arise from the system of assigning one teacher to a class. The authors made the point that this enables the teacher to present children with the world as a unified whole rather than with a world already divided up into secondary school subjects of study.

The authors argued that history can be more significant and exciting if it is considered in terms of man's development and his increasing understanding and control of his environment. They make the point (in a book written in the 1960s) that one of the most important factors in man's development has been his capacity to indulge in scientific enquiry. So the argument goes that if history is to make sense to children, they must be encouraged to put themselves in the position of the men who made the discoveries which contributed to our present understanding of the world.

Most of the book is an account if possible ideas to explore. It ends with a case study of the work of a class working on the topic of cavemen.

Ideas to explore:
*The scientist in early man
*Cave artists
*Man and animals
*Weapons and tools
*Materials and domestic life
*Materials in the modern home
*From materials to processes
*Ancient water supplies
*The voyages of discovery
*Transport
*Science through personalities
*Stories but not experiments