Over the years, many a teacher has been surprised by the occasional pupil with an unrelenting quest for knowledge, who subjects its weary mentor to a barrage of questions about life, the universe and everything else. Usually, the combined effects of a slavish attention to syllabus and the eventual regurgitant exam system manage to kill off this bumptious inquisitiveness entirely.

But it need not be like that. The latest offering from BBC Education’s Teaching Today: Primary Science offers a desperately-needed remedy. This is a helpful and progressive guide to the science of living things, their diversity and evolution and it covers the key aspects of all this term’s science output. The wisdom the programme espouses is simple and sound: children should be encouraged to discover and think for themselves, to be confident in their questioning and expression.

In an exercise designed to introduce the idea of classification, for instance, children categorise various objects into two different groups and are then asked to justify their criteria for doing so. While it is important that children recognise that classifying things helps us to order our lives, it is also crucial that they realise that there are many different ways of classifying that no particular classification is absolutely right or wrong.

Such principles apply equally to science. As the children are invited to classify living things, to differentiate between the living and the non-living, they are again encouraged to find out for themselves, and express their reasoning. With a nudge in the right direction, they too can discover and order the rich diversity of animal and plant life.

There are plenty of ideas to stimulate teaching in this way (complemented by the customary bearded experts who give the programme an authoritative dimension). The accompanying guidance notes, if at first sight insubstantial, provide further useful suggestions as well.

The overall guidance Teaching Today provides would without doubt help any teacher interested in teaching science in a creative and effective way.

It helps to place some of the defining concepts which enable us to order life firmly into the context of the wider world, as seen through the eyes of primary school children. In engaging them and inspiring them, it perhaps presents a lesson for the science education system as a whole primary school teachers and university lecturers alike that science can be, and should be, a creative and liberating part of our lives.

Maybe then there would not be so many children who wanted to discover the world, but were blinded by science.