I am going to play the role of the radical skeptic. My position is that the Next Generation Science Standards, adopted by many states to tell their K-12 teachers how to teach science, is just the latest example of our failure to do the impossible. We should not engage with the NGSS or attempt to improve them; we should instead dismiss them out of hand and expose the flawed premises that led to their creation.
I’ll begin with an analogy. A few years back, I went on one of those State Department-approved tours to Havana, Cuba. We were there to look at architecture. At the time, the Cuban regime had just begun letting private citizens open their own restaurants—a bold step for a socialist country. We went to a few of these places, and they weren’t bad. But each proprietor had to submit his menu to the government for approval. As often as not, the government would demand changes: cut out that beef dish because the country doesn’t have enough beef, add more fish and vegan dishes because they’re healthier, and so on.
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