Constructionisum and Generating Hypotheses

Constructionist Theory & Hypotheses
Constructionists focus on approaches that emphasize the role and responsibility of the learner. Everything appears to be about what we can do to support the learner and how the learner learns. We try to build and create and accommodate the learners, which in my opinion is good to a point.
There are six tasks that teachers can use to help students generate and test hypotheses. These include a systems analysis where students study parts and make predictions about what would change if parts were altered or removed, problem solving where they look at various solutions, historical investigations, where students look at historical events where there is controversy, invention where students examine a need and work out a solution, experimental inquiry, where students make informal hypotheses about why or how something happened, and decision making, where students decide which choice makes the most sense. (Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). All of these sound like a great ways to assist students in learning; however I have reservation about their usefulness in primary classes.
I often wonder what we are doing to our educational system. Do we take investigation opportunities to extremes? Should we provide opportunities for students to investigate and hypotheses IF their basic academic skills are not proficient? I think our students are less motivated and less educated and less able to think on their own than they were five years ago and we as educators keep trying to come up with some new and improved version of teaching them. In both the Constructionist Theory and the How to generate testing hypotheses it appears that students are investigating and creating all kinds of things but many do not have the necessary skills they need to help them excel, things like reading and understanding, and understanding money and how it works for you.
Perhaps these investigative, problem solving, analyzing, experimental inquiries systems are suitable or even beneficial in the upper grades but in the primary grades I believe they must be used sparingly. The primary grades are the foundation of the entire educational system of a child. If the foundation is not a solid one then the other educational years become a struggle. I believe there is no question that the young student could have many investigative opportunities in science. But the core academic subjects need to be taught with exactness.