ABSTRACT
Walt Whitman's poem exemplifies a dilemma and a concern for science educators. Here is the student, attracted to a lecture, interested in and wanting to know about astronomy, yet when confronted with the instructor's systematic presentation, ‘the proofs, the figures’, he becomes ‘unaccountably tired’. Empty. He is sickened and leaves. And in this leaving we feel the learner's profound sense of relief. For some science educators, however, this student's experience is not counted as a ‘valid’ one.
