Why by now in the course of history there continue to be mysteries about how to teach science or much of anything else, herbal shocks and baffles me.  I do have some ideas far as what I think is proven to work.

Because in my judgement it is in the Kindergarden to 8th Grades that need to work most perfectly, herbal it is there I have most focused my thinking these days.  In other correspondence with a Shakespeare the Engineer, I posted on this subject on the Engineers Forum, CR4.  There I ended recommending that all parents be required to teach at least one class about something they know about.

One of my sayings out of my little quote book, is:  Your Parents Don't Teach You What You Need To Know, They Teach You What They Know.  Really what that means is that parents know things teachers don't and vice versa.

I don't want to hear about why this ought not be done, or can't be done.  The mission is to give children the most perfect education possible.

Since now I am talking about children in the age of innocence I am aware that there are subjects inappropriate to be teaching them.  Science represents no undue threat to the innocent mind, by my lights at least.  Some parents have a real problem explaining we were maybe preceded by Chimpanzees, and got Neanderthal genes, which part explains how some jerk predicts the end of the world and ends up with 70 million dollars to put up more stupid posters I find less than funny.

But getting back to some nuts and bolts about how to have teaching done, my other recommendation is that peer to peer teaching and learning will do an awful lot of teaching.  I believe what I would do if charged to teach most any subject to young children, would be to foster a spirit of pride all around in this Life of The Mind, as something fun to share.

Sometimes I feel myself as if I myself am suspect at the adults table because I still learn many things, and especially in the sciences as if I were an innocent child.

Far as the reason you want children to know about the actual facts of the universe, the science of astrophysics, why things happen on our planet it turns out that outerspace and the other planets are not at all any sort of heaven.  Outerspace does not represent more living space enough at all for us, and we had better do right with what we've got.