Every year as I start the astronomy club for the youngsters, I bump into the same problem. The kids are wonderful, they love astronomy, and they are eager to talk about the Big Bang and Black Holes (oh, and Dark Matter / Dark Energy thing). But they don’t know how seasons happen and can not construct a sundial. And they, well, don’t care about such mundane things. So how should I start the course – from the very beginning, trying to replicate all the great discoveries of ancient astronomers, or from the opposite side, scouring the internet for those awesome pictures that JWST provides us with? To be honest, I usually try to do both, but I keep asking myself the same question every time.

Following kids' inquiries can result in a science course that consists of disparate activities preventing students from building lasting knowledge and leading them to disengage from science. At the same time, a well-structured and logical presentation in some cases can be even worse – you simply convey some “scientific truths” to your students, without actually teaching them anything.

Is the ideal unattainable? It might be.

At least we can agree that we need a high-quality science curriculum, that would combine consistency and flexibility, that would make science tangible for all learners while maintaining scientific rigor, that is inquiry-driven and phenomenon-driven, and that provides students with sound foundational scientific knowledge.

From this perspective, the curriculum is not just a set of units (which can vary), but rather a collection of practices and resources for the science class.