by James Morris
When I was a teenager and young adult, I always looked forward to reading Chet Raymo’s column called “Science Musings” in The Boston Globe. Chet Raymo is Professor Emeritus of Physics at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, and a well-known science writer. His short essays are reflections on science, education, and the natural world.
One of these essays, from the mid-1990s, made such an impression on me that I clipped it out and filed it in my “Science Education” folder, where I keep articles related to science and teaching. The essay is titled “Teaching a Sense of Wonder.” Here, Raymo makes a plea to 6th-grade science teachers, asking them not to emphasize terms and facts, but instead to stand back and think about what every middle school student should learn in a science class.
He boils it down to five important concepts, one of which is the history of life on Earth.
