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I apologize in advance if my comment is too philisophical, but I'm not so sure that I agree about truth being relative. Isn't the whole idea behind science that we're trying to find the rules that govern our world? And we're searching for some form of order in a universe full of seemingly random events?

In relation to the Brian Greene article, I feel like he doesn't give elementary and middle-school science teachers enough credit. The science I learned at home from my parents (who are foreign, by the way) was extremely dry and uninspiring, because that's the only way they learned, and therefore they only know how to teach that way. However, science at school was always fun because, especially in younger years, the classes were very hands-on. I remember that we all cut out "intestines" from paper, taped together dozens of pieces, and draped them around the room, which demonstrated clearly how long the small intestine is. That was in third grade, and I've never forgotten it. In 8th grade, my teacher demonstrated how air pressure holds us all together by placing a marshmallow in a vacuum chamber and watching it expand.

I do agree with him that once you hit high school level, the focus on memorizing facts is a lot stronger (and less fun). But perhaps that's a function of our society, which is so focused on standardized tests? Despite scoring well on whatever AP science exams I took, I'm unable to remember what I learned at the time, because none of it was presented memorably. Unfortunately, making science interactive and interesting takes a large amount of time, and when schools are concerned about their rankings, "interesting" no longer matters. Maybe Haverford and Bryn Mawr's decisions to remove themselves from future U.S. News college rankings is going to benefit us in our remaining time here.