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I was recounting some of our discussion, particularly the notion of teaching history as inquiry, to a friend who has a degree in history and who reports that, at many colleges, history is in fact already taught as inquiry. And I've had similar reactions from college and university scientists who say they already teach science as inquiry. From which follows an interesting question ... how come the idea of teaching science and history and so on seems so .... unusual/unreasonable at the K12 level? After all, K12 teachers are learning their subjects at colleges/universities, no?

My guess is that college and university educators are actually overstating the degree to which inquiry approaches are predominant ones at the relevant college/university levels. And that to whatver extent they are currently used at those levels, they are additional socio-political factors militating against their more widespread use at K12 levels. All of which isn't to denigrate either college/university faculty or K12 teachers but rather to say that knowing that inquiry approaches exist is quite different from making them a dominant educational approach, at either K12 or college/university levels.