Semester winding down

So the Spring semester is finally winding down, and all I gotta say is about freaking time. Driving 1 hour 15 minutes each way to and from UW=Platteville was starting to run me down physically. I am most def going to have to get in with a carpool next year. A couple of random thoughts on my first year of teaching:

1) A lot of my students do not seem to be interested in any aspect of science. This is weird because almost all of my students this past Spring are science majors (chem, bio, etc.). Last semester I had freshman that were engineering majors. Now I understand that most students might not like chemistry, but if you are a science or engineering major I would like to think that you would have some intellectual curiosity, which brings me to my next point.

2) Why and how are we failing are kids by not fostering their intellectual curiosity? One thing I've noticed is that as a professor I don't want to grade a student's work. It's tedious and boring. It also sets up a dynamic with your kids that makes it so that your students begin to despise you if they are failing and condone you if they are doing well. It would be more enjoyable if you could have discussions with your class about the material. Unfortunately, unless you give your students some kind of incentive (aka. a grade) they won't read the chapter or do the problems making a discussion like that impossible. Also, we've set up our education system so that being wrong means looking bad with your peers so no one says anything for fear of looking bad. All this, in my mind, goes back to the fact that intellectual curiosity seems to be lacking in a lot of my students. Where did it go? At some point these kids were probably asking questions like. "Why is the sky blue?" or, "What are clouds made of?". By the time they get to college they are asking, "What do I need to do to pass this boring class?".

3) How do I as a college professor address the above issue and make my class a place where curiosity is encouraged and fostered? Do I do group projects? Do I force the students to talk in class by making it part of the class?

Like I said, these are just random thoughts. On the whole, I love teaching and am looking forward to starting my tenure track position next Fall. However, I have a lot of questions as to how we are teaching are kids. There seems to be a lot of issues and the solutions don't always seem clear. Maybe part of it is finding ways that work for me and running with it. I dunno. The reason that I want to teach is to inspire kids to go on to do great things. Sometimes it feels like I am just herding cats though and no matter what I do, the results will be the same. What are your thoughts?