Two Worlds Apart -Comparing Greek and American 19th Century Science Education

• Autores: Konstantinos Tampakis
• Localización: The Circulation of Science and Technology: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science. Barcelona, 18-20 November 2010 / coord. por Antoni M. Roca Rosell, 2012, ISBN 978-84-9965-108-8, págs. 47-52
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In this paper, I intend to describe an example where the study of science education in two specific national contexts can illuminate the formation and character of the respective scientific communities. Thus, I will try to compare the educational structures and institutions created in nineteenth century US and Greece and show how they interacted with scientific practice in each case. At first glance, these two social and political formations had almost nothing in common. USA was a huge but fragmented state, with abundant natural resources and clear ties with a European superpower. On the other hand, Greece was a devastated small country, emerging after four hundred years of Ottoman rule and struggling to modernize under heavy European influence and interference. Despite their many differences, I aim to show how both American and Greek science education drew aspirations from the same European pedagogical models and how this process contributed to the character of scientific practice in each country. The tentative proposal of this work is that the history of science education in these cases should be seen as the history of discipline construction and not just as the last and least function of a mature scientific community.