Science and Elementary School

Why is it that we cannot try a new approach overall to teaching science to KIDS? Why is there so much focus on pre-school and on high school for so much of the money, but so little focus on how we can grab kids when they are so open to anything new--in elementary school? I understand that there are developmental issues that preclude changing classes all the time, issues that must be focused on. Still, we say we want more men teaching in our elementary schools. We say we want more children of both sexes to get involved in science.

What do we do? We find all sorts of news articles telling us to use computers to teach science. That's fine, as far as it goes. There still, however, is nothing like an actual person who LOVES science teaching it to kids. Engaging them. When I was in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, our grammar school (that's what it was back then) principal used her imagination and had her teachers focus on what they loved in the upper grades. My fourth grade teacher was married to a forest ranger and he brought animals into school to teach us about them. Each of the fifth and sixth grades had ONE teacher who adored science and liked math. So the other two teachers sent their students to those teachers twice a week, while the science/math gurus gladly sent us to the others for some of the writing and grammar stuff. It just made sense.

Why can't we have certified elementary school teachers with a specialty in science, or in math, or both? In schools that have at least three teachers per grade, what would it hurt to have classrooms switch off to the teacher who loves the subject. Cramming more information at the existing teachers and students will not make kids love science. Computers alone won't engage the imagination, spark the interest. ONE person has responded to my question. Just one. He said that there are too many developmental issues to do this. Why? I would have gone into elementary school teaching if I could have focused on science particularly. Most elementary school teachers treat science as the necessary evil they somehow have to get through. NOT ALL. But the curriculum is not much different in grades 1-5 than it was when I was a kid. This is wrong, it seems to me.

I won't write more for now. I am interested in the subject, though. I had thought things had changed more, until I started tutoring my niece and nephew and realized, even in their fairly affluent town, they were not learning a whole lot more about science than I did... until suddenly, in seventh through tenth grade, they were just dumped with huge amounts of information in short spurts. Why? for tests?

If anyone stumbles into this, I'd like to understand.