The knowledge that should be included in a school curriculum is constrained/influenced by several factors.

Firstly, and ideally, students should acquire a fairly comprehensive understanding of the nature of the human race, and its place in the universe, in so far as this is presently understood.

There are obvious questions about when and how certain information should be presented. Obviously it would not make much sense to try to teach young children the mathematics behind gravitation. However it should be fairly easy to present a non-technical picture and narrative of even quite complex topics such as the evolution of galaxies or the development of all lifeforms presently on earth from small primitive lifeforms

The view here is that the first years of elementary school should be spent in presenting the picture of how we arrived at our present position in the universe. It is also possible that the more extensive and comprehensive an informal picture that young children have of our present place in the universe, the more they might be interested, and the more they might be capable of, acquiring the Scientific/Technological/Engineering and Mathematical knowledge by which we try to understand our universe.

Presenting this picture is the ideal, but there are a number of related problems (discussed in detail elsewhere).

(1) One such problem arises from the fact that in many areas we have no certain knowledge about the nature of various aspects of the human world/earth/universe, but instead have just theories. Some examples are:
- the physical origin of the universe or indeed if it had an origin (Big Bang, Steady State, Oscillating Universe, etc.)
- fundamental nature of matter/energy/space-time (dark matter and dark energy, gravitons and other hypothesized particles, various interpretations of quantum theory, etc., etc.)
- the origin of living matter from non-living matter (for example, the terrestrial origin of organic molecules vs. the extraterrestrial origin of organic molecules)
- the mechanisms whereby species evolve (for example, natural selection, forward-looking (teleological) selection, evolution by symbiogenesis, epigenetic evolution, natural genetic engineering, etc., etc.)
- the origins and development of the first human (different theories about where humans first evolved, various early human ancestors, and when/which route humans took as they spread across the earth).

Thus when trying to present a picture to young children of how we arrived at our present situation in the universe, there is thus the problem of how to balance telling a coherent story with the fact that, while there may be mostly broad agreement amongst specialists about the "broad strokes" of the picture, there may be numerous different theories about some of the details.

(2) Another problem is that there may be deeply different views about the essential nature of the cosmos. There are theories within science that this universe is just one of a multitude of disconnected parallel universes that exist side by side. There are also theories that this universe is one of an infinite series that stretches forwards and backwards in time, as the universe goes through cycles of expansion from a singularity (this present universe currently being in the expansion phase) and contraction back to a singularity, this cycle having occurred infinitely often in the past, and destined to occur infinitely often in the future. There are views in major religions that see the physical universe as existing as one of several realms, and/or that the physical universe was created by a higher being.

(3) There are also differing views about such concepts as the meaning and purpose of existence, whether life has purpose or meaning or is just another feature of the physical universe like rocks and the oceans, whether humans have a destiny or whether such concepts are meaningless. While there are no conclusive answers to the questions raised by speculating on these concepts, and many different proposed answers, young people should eventually know something of the variety of viewpoints.