Such beautiful masterpieces were obviously much too costly and rare for the thousands of masters and students who thronged the 12th-century seats of learning.
"I don't want people teaching students that Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi gave a systematic treatment of quadratic equations in the 10th century instead of learning how to solve quadratic equations," she says.
By the 10th and 11th centuries, Islamic centers of learning from Baghdad to Marrakesh to Seville were translating and expanding upon Greek philosophical treatises, fueling debates about the role of reason in faith, philosophy in religion.
With improved training costs, ongoing access to resources and better retention strategies, online education is causing world-famous universities to transform century-old models of learning and adapt their offerings to students' current needs.
WHAT IF TEACHERS GAVE UP the vestiges of their educational past, threw away the worksheets, burned the canon and reconfigured the foundation upon which a century of learning has been built?
Inspired by the ancient Athenian schools, the Platonic Academy established in Florence in the second half of the 15th century became a centre of learning and diffusion of Christian Platonism, a philosophy that conceived of all forms as the creative thoughts of God and that inspired considerable artistic innovation and creativity.
During the 5th and 6th centuries there was a renaissance of learning in the remote land of Ireland, introduced there initially by the patron saints of Ireland Patrick, Bridget, and Columba who established schools at Armagh, Kildare, and Iona.
The occupation of Timbuktu, a center of learning for centuries, was the latest in a long historical list of conquests — by Arab nations, by the Songhai and Maasina empires, by France.
Experts say kissing evolved from sniffing, which people did centuries ago as a way of learning about each other.
Lynd, a coauthor of Growing Energy, predicts a revolution in agriculture as farmers switch from dealing with overproduction, a dominant problem of the last century, to learning "how to get a lot out of a limited land base".
