Anecdotally, science education in the United States seems to teach science as if its a history lesson. In most cases, things are compartmentalized (much like the scientists themselves) and students are given a natural science class, then are free to take chemistry, some flavor of biology (depending on your school or state's position on evolution), and physics. In these classes, students are taught scientific discovery as opposed to scientific method and understanding. Please don't confuse what I'm saying. Yes we all learned some flavor of the scientific method during high school, or even middle school, but when learning about Newton's laws of motion, how many of us recall our teacher telling us that he developed differential calculus in order to do it? In order to solve the fundamental problems of physics in his day that would allow him to formulate his laws of motion, Newton had to develop an entirely new method to do so. He took issues with the current models of physics, and sought to replace them. With his new method, calculus, he created a new model that the next three-hundred years of physics benefitted from until the coming of a wide-eyed Jew named Einstein.
What I'm getting at though, and probably failing horribly at articulating, is why do we not teach the concept of the model in primary education science classes? Modeling is an essential and inseparable part of all scientific activity, and yet the concept is barely mentioned in school curriculums that focus mainly on the history of science and discovery. Perhaps a shift in focus will students having better understandings of science and how it works.
