There's gotta be a consideration of developing the brain to understand some realistic fundamentals of science. E.g. science that can be applied to the day-to-day.

I mean you wouldn't present that General Relativity doesn't work with Quantum Mechanics in the first year of a Physics class. Nor would you present the philosophical theory that we have no free will. Nor would you try to show that in some circumstances, the sum of all whole numbers to infinity is the negative fraction, one-twelfth. That is: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + ... (to infinity) = -1/12

I'm not a teacher, but I think that its similar to how solving equations are taught. First, you posit a statement that cannot be false. For example, to the untrained eye, "x = y" cannot be anything but false - because the letter "x" is the letter "x" and not "y". But you force your students to learn that in this specific case, "x IS y".

EDIT: I don't complain that, when I was a child, Pluto was classified a planet.

EDIT 2: As long as in the long run, the student gets the idea that science is forever changing, it's all good. I mean that's the fundamental meaning of believing in science, right?

I believe this thing because of this other thing ... FOR NOW.

I really like Lawrence Krauss' book title "The Greatest Story Ever Told ... So Far".

I didn't experience scientific learning like that. Sure there was lots to learn but there were also plenty of experiments and ways to learn that taught critical thinking. If you think that information technology is a science (basically physics) then the quality of our sciences at the moment is pretty astounding. Yes it may be in a very small percentage of the population, but science is actually going 'gang-busters' at the moment. In the next five years we will have a mission to Mars and plenty of other cool stuff, with a lot of this being privately funded. So that is even more amazing. I hope 'science' can get serious about cleaning up this wonderful planet that we are on. Peace!

I work in a school, and I don't see science taught as "verbatim" at all. Or perhaps I don't know what you mean by that.

Students here recently built a hovercraft with a tarp, a circle of plywood, and a battery powered leaf blower. They started with an idea, tried the idea, and each time it didn't work, they figured out why and made changes.

They were able to articulate their discoveries and findings in the "verbatim" language of science like "thrust," and "momentum," and they were able to write about their project with facts and data produced by their project. When they were done, they put a chair on it and scooted the principal across the stage.

There were things in the project that were not up for debate: the weights of the wood, chair, and principal; the power of the leaf blower, etc.

I don't understand what you mean by "throwing in philosophy." What "very nature" of this project should they have questioned? They didn't entertain the idea of spontaneous levitation, but I think that's a good thing.

Perhaps science is taught differently now to when I was getting my basics in high school. We did basic experiments in both physics and chemistry, that required application of the theory and measurement of results. So critical thinking was constantly required.