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Students in inquiry often think its “cheating” to go look online for information, or they think I want them to completely disregard information they look up. I don’t think they need to go look up information, but I’m happy if they do. Really, I just want them to treat ideas they read online no differently than they do ideas they hear from class. Those ideas are subject to our scrutiny, to our questioning; and we should concern ourselves with whether those ideas help us to build an explanation, or whether those ideas are merely providing scientific jargon.

I never let my students forget that pairing of difficulty with results, because I never forget it. I let them know they are engaged in a sacred task that connects them to millennia of human effort encoded in their genes. If they can fight their way to the truth, the truth will make them free, just as it did for me that day in high school physics.

To engage with the world in search of any kind of Truth is an expression of the search for excellence. That, by its very nature, is desperately difficult. There will always be a price to be paid in time, sweat and tears. We should never sugarcoat that reality.

We want to teach students more than just how to get jobs, we also want to teach them how to live with depth and for purposes that stretch beyond their own immediate interests. We should never forget that connection. If we do, we are in danger of losing more than just the next generation of science majors.