Newton's laws

Sir Isaac Newton was a brilliant scientist who's publication of the law of gravity and the three laws of motion in 1687 changed the face of science. According to a poll of scientists, Newton is consider more influential than Einstein. This may be attributed to the fact that Einstein's physics is understood by few people whereas Newton's legacy continues into the present day and his mathematical genius forms much of the curriculum used to train modern engineers.

When you also consider that the work was published in Latin, the title being "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica", you begin to understand that students in that era were expected not to understand just their specialty but to also be competent in a broad range of disciplines. Understanding Latin, Philosophy, mathematics, and other subjects such as theology and astronomy meant that Newton was able to apply this broad range of understanding to his own work.

Compare that to the education of children today. In some ways, the curriculum attempts to give children broad access to a number of subjects. There's opportunities to learn about history, geography, science, maths and English. Equally, design technology, IT, physical education and languages are made available to your everyday secondary student in the United Kingdom.

For all this advancement, we're not producing intellectual giants who rearrange the world as we know it. That's not to say that children today are born with lower intelligence than those of Newton's time. Yet we don't seem to be able to leverage the heights that our intelligence are capable of. In the UK our children are assessed until they are sick of it. They don't seem to learn much, apart from knowing how to pass exams. There's a feeling that they're not getting the opportunity to delve into who they are from a secure platform.

Our society in the UK needs to take a long look at what we want the next generations, deliberate plural, to achieve. After all, without the creative thinking and ability to shape how we interact with the world the prospects for the UK and the planet as a whole are quite grim.