I’ve had similar thoughts for years, specifically regarding the teaching of science (I’m an engineer).
In my engineering program, most technical classes were taught without any context at all, historical or otherwise. We were taught the formulas first and foremost, and the concepts as an afterthought. It was only in my senior-level classes that I found myself making spontaneous connections between what I was taught in, say, a chemistry class, with what I was learning in an advanced materials science class or electronics lab.
My opinion parallels the author’s here — otherwise dry material can be made more interesting and (more important) taught more effectively by including historical background and a broader context…how it came to be known and how it relates to other knowledge.
I’m surprised that nobody here has criticized economics education. If there is one subject in need of (and wonderfully amenable to) improvement in how it’s taught, it’s economics. There is so much fascinating material out there (real-world case studies, broader economic histories, etc.) it’s hard to imagine why we still stick with the boring macro-micro, graph after graph after graph approach to intro-level classes. I learned (and retained) more about capitalism from reading “Atlas Shrugged” than from two honors-level economics classes in college, in which I can barely remember the word “capitalism” even being used.
