ABSTRACT
Beyond the interdisciplinary aspect of STEM, beyond the renewed emphasis on design and tinkering, there is the basic program of having students engage with material in ways that foster their coming to make sense of it. Curiously, a steady diet of schooling often leaves students indifferent to the seeming contradictions or outrageous proportions of the modern understanding. Take a simple example: in a study of the historical sciences, I would point out to students something I found rather curious in the standard chart of the Earth’s history. Reading it from the bottom up there is a sequence of periods, the Cambrian, the Ordovician, the Silurian, the Devonian, the Permian, etc.—a sequence of eight items-and then the last two, the Tertiary and the Quaternary. Since “tertiary” and “quaternary” derive from the Latin for three and four, I would simply ask: Why would you have a sequence that goes through eight items and then says “three, four”? When I would get rather flat expressions from the class, as if to say “What’s the big deal?” I would then tell a little story . . .
