Presumably the teacher is suggesting that the era of science-based knowledge and intellectual activity has ended and we’re now in a new dark age of wilful ignorance and evidence-free conspiracy theories.
maybe the double meaning of ERA: in US history it’s the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, and in science its a geological era.
If that’s it, it doesn’t really work.
I’m thinking it may be playing off of the Taylor Swift Eras phenomenon, which has become dislodged from its origins and much more widely applied in youth language, with everybody seeing their life experience in eras. (What we used to dismiss as phases?)
I recommend Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark for a full explanation for why this strip is both hilarious and terrifying.
I’m pretty sure that this is a political strip and the suggestion is that the era of science, which began in (to pick a date) 1687, when Newton’s Principia was published, ended in 2025, when the government took various steps that, in the cartoonist’s view, are opposed to science. Note that the first panel shows that the class is history.
narmitaj (1) got it, as did Usual John (5).
My first thought was the Equal Rights Amendment, but that didn’t make any sense. It wouldn’t have anything to do with science. Anyway the answer would depend on definitions. It’s either 0 or 47 years and counting. As far as I recall, this is the only amendment that got into the ratification process and never completed it. So I agree with the answers given.
I was incorrect about that being the only unratified amendment.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Presumably the teacher is suggesting that the era of science-based knowledge and intellectual activity has ended and we’re now in a new dark age of wilful ignorance and evidence-free conspiracy theories.
maybe the double meaning of ERA: in US history it’s the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, and in science its a geological era.
If that’s it, it doesn’t really work.
I’m thinking it may be playing off of the Taylor Swift Eras phenomenon, which has become dislodged from its origins and much more widely applied in youth language, with everybody seeing their life experience in eras. (What we used to dismiss as phases?)
I recommend Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark for a full explanation for why this strip is both hilarious and terrifying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World
I’m pretty sure that this is a political strip and the suggestion is that the era of science, which began in (to pick a date) 1687, when Newton’s Principia was published, ended in 2025, when the government took various steps that, in the cartoonist’s view, are opposed to science. Note that the first panel shows that the class is history.
narmitaj (1) got it, as did Usual John (5).
My first thought was the Equal Rights Amendment, but that didn’t make any sense. It wouldn’t have anything to do with science. Anyway the answer would depend on definitions. It’s either 0 or 47 years and counting. As far as I recall, this is the only amendment that got into the ratification process and never completed it. So I agree with the answers given.
I was incorrect about that being the only unratified amendment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States#Unratified_amendments