Teachers love and hate "the cool." As educators, few things are more coveted than being recognized as teaching the "coolest" class in the school. However, teachers may also feel an uneasy ambivalence, admonishing themselves that serious science is substantial, enduring, and intellectual, and wonder whether their "cool" class was merely superficial, fleeting, and mindless. This article examines the "cool" and asserts its importance in science education. While acknowledging that some experiences can be engaging, but are superficial and unimportant---this is the "merely cool." other experiences are deeply moving, because a growing capacity to perceive meaning and value in the world is felt--this is the "sublimely cool." The intent of this article is to present a view of the "cool" that highlights its value as an educational construct. Educators should see the close resemblance between students' cool experiences and the sublime experiences described by philosophers, artists, and scientists. In reconstructing the idea of the "cool," good educators will appreciate how these experiences are the starting and end point, the potential and culmination of worthwhile education. The "cool" is no longer an empty expression of superficial excitement. Borrowing from Miles Davis, the author states that he is suggesting a "rebirth of cool" in education, rejecting the crass instrumentalism that justifies educational practice primarily in terms of the quantity and "cash value" of student learning. The purpose of education is not merely to have students take on, carry, and bring forth school content. Instead, the experience of school should "carry" the students and move them with the irresistible force of the "sublimely cool." (Contains 1 table and 41 notes.)