Still living in the times of Galileo?

SHIN BOK-RYONG
The author is a former emeritus professor of history at Konkuk University.

Wernher Magnus Freiherr von Braun (1912-1970), the father of rocket engineering, was born to a prestigious family. His father was Poland’s Minister of Agriculture in the Weimar Republic, and his mother was from the English royal family. Braun studied music but his dream was in space. He was arrested by police while experimenting with explosives in the streets.

Having majored in liquid fuel at the Technical University of Berlin, he was deployed to the weapons department and produced the V-2 rocket that attacked Britain under Hitler’s orders. He agonized over the reality that his dream was used for killing. After the war, the U.S. arrested Braun and brought him to the United States instead of punishing him as a war criminal. He was given citizenship and got a job at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to focus on rocket research. While he was working as a researcher, the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik first in 1959, and in 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first astronaut to fly a manned spacecraft.

The U.S., which had always considered the Soviet Union to be a step lower, lost its lead in the space race. Media and scientists criticized von Braun and asked him how the U.S. could catch up with the Soviet Union. Braun calmly responded that American elementary schools neglect math education. Reporters were surprised by the answer, and educators were even more shocked. I remember being unable to continue reading and absentmindedly staring at the sky after reading the part in Time magazine.

The Korean Ministry of Education plans to remove calculus II and geometry from the college entrance exam. Plato, who taught philosophy, did not receive a student who did not know geometry in his academy entrance exam. In Korea, the time may come that one may be able to graduate from the history department without knowing the “Samguk Yusa,” or “the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms.”

The specter of the Confucian scholars who ruined the Joseon Dynasty by using Hendrick Hamel, a Dutch science student, and his crew as slaves after they were shipwrecked in 1653 is hovering over the country once again. When humanities persecute natural science, disasters come for sure. The National Board of Education is going the wrong way. Are we still living in the “times of Galileo era?”