For more than a century, the result of science instruction has been little or no change in student understanding of the phenomena studied. What most science students learn, instead, is that they are on the lower rung of a caste system in which they are dependent on a higher caste for declarations of the truth. An alternative approach to teaching science, which has been demonstrated to result in significant change in understanding, is ignored and resisted. This article examines the reasons for this sorry state of affairs and explains the alternative approach, mainly in the words of Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr., culled from articles that appeared in the highly commendable open-access e-journal Constructivist Foundations.