Why is Science Education so Important

The words ‘following the science’ have been used a great deal by politicians over the last year, something that we have considered, for example, in our Critical thinking lessons in Year 11 where we explore the concept of ‘knowledge’. It is tempting to think of science as a ‘body of information’. But if you look at science from the perspective of a scientist, such as the popular scientist and Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Manchester, Brian Cox, who speaks passionately about science being about ‘what we don’t know’, it is seen from a different perspective. These are certainly not new ideas and Cox quotes Richard Feynman’s key essay from 1955 about science education teaching us to ‘embrace doubt and uncertainty’. Cox uses examples from his field, where if you ask the question “what is the Milky Way made of?” (a popular part of a traditional science curriculum!) you could answer this by saying ‘stars’. But, in fact, only around 5% of the mass of a galaxy like the Milky Way is made of stars; most of it is made of dark matter - and we don’t really know what that is. The job of a scientist is to embrace this doubt about not knowing and to find ways of finding out more.

Lots of preamble really to lead me back to the value of a science education. The value of a science education is not to fill children’s heads with facts and knowledge. The real value of a science education is to engage students in thinking, exploring, investigating and, most importantly, questioning why. A science education can develop empathy, the empathy to imagine, for instance, what it was like if you were Copernicus challenging widely accepted beliefs (‘understanding’) that the Earth was at the centre of the universe, or Darwin exploring his ideas of natural selection. You can probably hear my bias towards science here, suffice to say that I believe all aspects of the curriculum (and therefore education) should do just as I’ve described a science education should do: develop critical and curious thinkers, empathetic individuals, and great communicators who have the tenacity and resilience to take risks and to keep trying. All the things that we are aiming to do at St Julian’s.

Science Week, a week celebrated across schools in the UK and beyond, really is a celebration of all things science, and exemplifies the questioning and investigative approach that Hannah Halford and her team are developing through the re-design of the science key stage 3 curriculum to develop curious scientists who love science and learn through questioning and investigation. We can’t wait to get back to doing this face to face!

Dr Nicola Mason
Head of School