The primary motivation for these pages is the belief that elementary-, middle- and high school curricula could do a much better job of passing on our understanding of the cosmos, and the place of humans in it.

It is also believed that if the various aspects of this picture are initially presented as a narrative aided by graphics (rather than in a mathematical/scientific/technical way), then this increased understanding would attract more students into the STEM fields, and actually make it easier for them to transition into these fields.

It is hoped that people will contribute information to eventually fill out all the various areas of information that are presently empty, thus providing an extensive repository of knowledge as a resource. Here is a link to a demo set of example pages on an area of mathematics called partitions of integers (scroll to the bottom of the page partitions of integers for links to other pages with further information on this topic). The mathematics information on these page would be accessible, possibly with some guidance by teachers, to high school students in upper grades.

A significant problem in trying to design a curriculum that presents to students a comprehensive picture of our understanding on the cosmos and the place of humans in the cosmos, is that there are large gaps in this understanding.

Firstly, there are many fundamental question to which we presently have no definite answers. For example, we do not presently know
- whether or not this universe is merely one amongst infinitely many universes (part of a larger "multiverse",
- whether this universe is one of an infinite sequence, with infinitely many having preceded this one and with infinitely many more to come after, or whether there is just this single universe,
- what the eventual end of the universe will be, whether it expands forever and temperatures fall to absolute zero, or whether it contracts back to a singularity, or whether some other scenario will play out,
- what the universe was like immediately following its origin,
- what is the fundamental nature of the physical universe,
- whether there is life elsewhere in the universe,
- whether concepts like "destiny", "meaning of life", etc., have in fact any actual meaning,
- whether religious beliefs like "God", "heaven", "soul", "afterlife", etc., have or have not some validity.

Secondly, there are many fine details in the picture that we do have, that are not clear, or for which there are several claimed explanations. This lack of a clear picture can be seen, for example, in
- different theories about the formation of the solar system,
- gaps in understanding of the nucleosynthesis of the heavier elements in various types of star,
- the different explanations for the development of the first living organisms from non-living matter,
- the different theories for the extinction of the dinosaurs,
- gaps in our understanding of the evolution of humans from pre-human ancestors,
- large gaps in the record of human history, particularly human history before written records,
- the fact that in many diverse fields our knowledge is growing steadily.

Thus one fact that should be clearly explained to students, when our understanding of the universe, humans, life, etc., is presented to them, is that our understanding is quite limited and continues to develop.

The main areas of this proposed curriculum are as follows:

If all the proposed content areas in this web site were filled out completely to the same extent as the demonstration area mentioned above (partitions of integers ), then the totality would comprise a very extensive repository of information.
This totality clearly surpasses what could be passed on to students in the years of elementary, middle- and high school, so what is necessary is to construct a syllabus that is a condensed framework on which all of this information hangs.
The full repository of knowledge could be used as an information source, for say, projects or topics that particular students wanted to investigate further.