Does the Universe Have a Job?

One major quest of humans is to find meaning. We're constantly looking for answers, especially pertaining to the meaning of life. But the evolutionary biologist's view of life as a series of random mutations is unsatisfying—ignored or rejected by most adults and incomprehensible to most children. We can hardly imagine a sensitive teacher responding to a child's "Why are we here?" with the emotionally empty "We're all just a 3.5 billion-year-old mistake!" We want to have a purpose, we want to make a difference, and we want to count. Even the U.S. national science standards acknowledge that science is a search for meaning.

Schools have a crucial role in fostering this search for meaning. One way that a teacher can help students find a purpose, make a difference, and count in the classroom is to consider students' questions and ideas fully and to investigate them seriously. Honoring all questions, even those not aligned with conventional thinking and seemingly tangential to the specific topic, creates an environment that makes inquiry the standard operating procedure in the classroom.