Does it really have to be one or the other? It seems more like a spectrum to me. There is likely a "golden mean" where students learn the foundational knowledge that they will be expected to know, while still learning significantly.

To play Devil's Advocate: another option would be to specialise sooner and more narrowly.

This brings up the question of how to best balance a variety of students in the classroom, from those coming directly from high school all the way up to those who are taking classes for interest's sake after retirement.

This reminds me of a philosophy I try to enact in my tutoring especially: the best tutors are those who work themselves out of a job.

We really don't traditionally teach much history of science in science classes. This is one argument to do so, but it would take a real effort in order to do so without centering white cis male voices exclusively; so much of scientific history as we know it focuses only on that, when there are at least some documented cases that I know of where someone from another culture discovered a law first, but was not credited.

I would not have defined "good student" this way... or at least not entirely.

This really resonates with me. As someone who has an undergraduate degree in physics and one in religious studies, the two subjects have vastly different knowledge structures. The criteria for collecting knowledge, for presenting knowledge in order for it to be respected, and for relating concepts is fundamentally quite different in the two fields, in my experience. Of course there are many fundamental similarities as well, but the differences stand out and make this statement resonate with my differences of experience with humanities vs sciences.

Is this the "human dimension" from above? If so, this is more easily related to the hard sciences, to me. Scientific literacy has all sorts of personal and social implications. Is this what is meant by "learning something about themselves or others" then?

Of all the new categories, I find this hardest to relate back to the hard sciences. What are students learning about themselves or others in the pursuit of physics? Sure, they are learning about how they learn, but that seems more to do with the last category in this list.

I'm interested in the difference between "felt needs" and "desires" or "wants". It seems like they are trying to get at wants, but the phrasing "felt needs" feels significant.

I understand how wants can sometimes feel compelling, and perhaps be a "felt need", but is that really what we're getting at here?

I'd love to learn more about this.