Why did people hate science in school?

[Blandmum]

Follow on from the cross country thread and others.

There are lots of people on mn who hated science in school, I find this hard to understand mt self

But an honest question, and the answer would be useful to me to help stop kids now from hating it.

Why did you hate it in school? It would help if you can be specific in your answers, so if 'It was boring' is the answer if would be useful if you could also tell me why it was boring IYSWIM

Many thanks!

NN, they are gutted and are taking it quite personaly.

oh dear

I was in the lunchtime science club in Y7 and we did interesting things like glass-blowing. By Y9 I dreaded science and dropped all of it (you were allowed to in those days!) for O levels. I could never 'get' it. Physics was full of equations I couldn't get my head around, and formulae you had to remember. Chemistry meant learning the periodic table and I just couldn't do it. The chem teacher was lovely but I couldn't bear the subject.

When I became an LSA I was assigned to a lot of Y10 and Y11 science classes (because no-one else wanted to do them) and soon realised that actually science wasn't as boring as I thought. Most of my Y10 bottom set spent the whole lesson putting on make-up (the girls) or chatting (the boys) and I'd be telling them to shush because I couldn't hear the teacher. I was amazed by how much more relevant the syllabus is now and that children still weren't interested.

tallula, that is very interesting. Why do you think they had disengaged? Do you think they started to find it hard and choosing to switch off was a more attractive option that pressing on and risking 'failure' ?

TBH I don't know. It was that general feeling of "school is crap" that you always seem to get with the lower sets of that age. I have felt for a long time that Y10 and up with no interest in school should be allowed to work instead, and come back when they are older and want to learn. I've met quite a few of these kids out and about in the years since they've left school and they always seem much happier in the world of grown-ups and work.

I agree with you 100% I always feel that we are failing these kids by not providing them with what they feel as relevant courses. Some well structured vocational work would be so much more useful for them.

I think that we start to turn these kids off in year 8-9.....if we can make them see that they *can& make progress at that stage we are less likley to see them 'dropping of' in year 10.

Sad though, isn't it?

mb, I am also thinking very hard about this, because I am seeing the other end of it. In most of the places where I have worked, the women engineers could have held meetings in a telephone box! This is fairly sad as it is a relatively easy career to fit around having children, and traditionally "female" skills like communication are very valuable.

I think tallulah makes a good point about formulae being difficult for teenagers to grasp. I remember doing "heat gained = mass x specific heat capacity x rise in temperature" without really understanding it. Tried to learn it by rote - got to the exam, couldn't rememember the formula, so was forced to think for the first time about what it really meant. I managed to work the formula out in the exam! that was really the turning point when I started to get interested in physics.

It must be a challenge to try and teach this sort of thing though.
I was still learning in a very childish way, until I was around 14 or 15, and maybe this was why I found formulae difficult. I also found most of the books we read in English too difficult and boring as well up to that age, so it wasn't just physics.

I loved science at school. I wanted to take physics, chem and biology at GCSE but they felt that typing would be more appropriate for a girl and made me do it. I hated it so much I resorted to typing rude poems about people, got chucked out then put in Embroidery except the class was too small, th teacher gave up and I misseda whole GCSE (well they entered me for art but I had a week to do the 2 year portfolio and got an F).

Annoying thing? I LOVE electronics, helping DH do his electronicy stuff and soldering is great fun. I was also top of my year at Physics but nonetheless I couldn't do it. Bah. I did pass chem (C grade) and Bio (also a C but again the miserable sods only entered me for low expectations level so I ahd to get 90% in the exam toa chieve that C grade- so i did well!). I had a similar scenario in Geog where they said I couldn't do it ability wise, despite being the highest ranked girl in the year in the exams.

I wasn't a particularly likeable girl: I had a noxious childhood at the hands of two (now recovered) mentally ill parents (they knew this- one of the two teachers that stuck by me was trying to persuade me to allow them to contact SS), was shy as a result, had only one set of uniform a year, one haircut a year and was rarely allowed a bath. I honestly think that influenced their perception of my abilities. Ba"*stards.

(Oh and in case you think I am paranoid, I later befirended the daughter of my Geog teacher who told me he referreed to me at home as witch b*tch).

NN we now offer an applied science course at GCSE which is far more 'hands on' and less learning,in which the lower attainment kids do better. It is all far more 'relevant' and less abstract. They find this more motivational and kids who would otherwise get a d/E tend to get Cs

oh and at the time the school (private girls) were really trying to push more to take sciences and become engineers. I naturally resist that sort of pressure !!

Loved biology, OK with chemistry but hated, loathed physics because so much of it related to maths (which I was absolutely hopeless at), and so I didn't understand a word of it. I also couldn't see the relevance of it.

Loved it. All subjects. Was good at it too. Wish id made more of an effort with it really.

I loved the hands on bit of science, I enjoyed it right up until 4th year when it seemed to be all about formulas and involved endless calculations.

I think I have passed on my interest to my two and they are both very inquizative.

Laziness and wussiness were my problems.

Gave up chemistry with immense relief at 14 because I was so terrified all the time. Our first ever chemistry lesson was a safety one (sensibly enough) and after that I felt the whole lab was a mass of naked flames, acids that might leap out of the jars and corrode my hand like in the safety sign, fumes that could kill us etc etc. Also we had to sit on lab stools for over an hour and it was agony, my legs used to go all spotty because the blood flow was restricted.

I did some chemistry later for a human biology a-level, and it was all theoretical, molecule diagrams on the blackboard and carefully explained, and i loved it - felt safe and they took it slowly.

Physics i was truly rubbish at and did hate the experience of failing - I never seemed to have any kind of breakthrough or understanding, either I had learned the information or I hadn't, I was no good at applying the info to an unfamiliar question. it was frustrating because i could see that it might be amazing.

biology i really liked because it was descriptive and i could understand it, but had the same problem with dissection so didnt' take the a level at school. i once saw the a level class all with their little rats splayed out on their dissection plates and just wanted to puke.

also because i was loving history and english it would have seemed perverse,really, to give those up just so that i could do subjects i disliked and struggled with.

funnily enough in the end i got exactly equivalent grades in history/physics and english/biology. so i suppose i could have gone either way.

sorry , how long and boring.

In answer to original question (sorry not read all of thread). Because our science teachers were totally and completely uninspiring. Since leaving school I've often thought it was such a shame that science was approached with such dullness at our school because it is such a fascinating subject. But while the Humanities teachers seemed able to inspire and excite, the science teachers were all a bit like frightened rabbits that seemed to hate children. TBH I think they were all failed scientists who had gone into teaching as a last resort whereas the english teachers were (generally) teaching because they loved it.

Interesting question, MB, because people often say things like 'Oh, I hated languages at school' or even 'I can't do languages'...

I didn't 'hate' science as such, but it certainly wasn't my favourite subject. Mostly down to crap teachers. An exchange I still remember is:

Me (to physics teacher): Can you explain this question? (Working on past papers prior to doing O'level)
Teacher: No. I don't understand that one either. Go on to the next question!

WTF!

Same teacher in his alternative guise as a chemistry teacher told me I was 'thick, thick, thick, thick, thick!'. Great for the self-esteem!

Other reasons were more practical. I didn't like biology because it involved drawing diagrams of things, and I really really can't draw at all, so drawing something like a fish, say, was just a nightmare for me.

I hated chemistry because basically I was scared of chemicals and of getting burned. That sounds a bit pathetic, doesn't it. But at home we weren't allowed to strike a match or anything like that - in fact there was nothing gas in the house, so no flames at all. My mum had two brothers who were killed before she was born (aged about 6 and 8) in a barn fire and I think she was just paranoid about fire (she still won't light our gas cooker even now). So I was just terrified of having to light a bunsen burner. But obviously didn't want to admit to being scared, so just pretended to hate chemistry instead.

I liked physics, though.

Not sure this is much help in helping you to help kids nowadays not to hate science, though... Children with a paranoid fear of fire are unlikely to make chemists... LOL!

Tempted to start a parallel thread about languages.

Funny thing is that I now teach Primo Levi's 'Periodic Table' and have to do this introductory class on what the Periodic Table actually is... I always tell them that my chemistry teacher told me I was 'thick' though! It's my cop out in case I get it all wrong.

Can still remember the mnemonic he taught us to remember the 2nd full line of it (probably not the sort of thing our very straight-laced Headmistress would have approved of her gals learning...)

Narcotics Magnify All Simple Pleasures So Clearly, Actually...

I have just heared part of Primo Levi's book on Radio 4 and fully intend to use part of it the next time I teach photosynthesis....the wonderful bit about how the tiny amount of co2 in the atmosphere becomes all living things. Womderful stuff!

At the moment I start the lesson with the Biblical Quote on the board... 'All flesh is grass' and end it with 'you are the stuff that stars are made of' The kids all think that I bonkers, but who cares! Some stuff is just too good for them to be ignorent about!!!!

Ellbell, you might well enjoy the Oliver Sacks book, 'Uncle Tungsten' which deals with his teenage facination with chemistry and the periodic table. A cracking read.

lizs - it was computing at my school. Headmistress successfully put everyone off software engineering by constantly going on about computers - of course it was the degree course I should have studied, instead of the one I chose!

I did my GCSES/A'Levels reasonably recently (2000/2002) although the curriculum might have changed since then.

GCSE chemistry was ok, but I just never connected to it, I felt the teacher saw me as a bit of a right off and never bothered. I enjoyed physics in that I liked the teacher, but I just felt it was too mathmatical and I was never really explained a lot of the concepts. Just expected to memorise formulas etc. Quite uninspiring.

I liked biology GCSE a lot and was quite motivated with it. I found A'Level biology to be a HUGE jump for me, possibly because I am not terrible scientific (got an A at GCSE though), the whole course seemed to focus on the students who were going on to do medicine or biology at uni. Again I felt the teacher wrote me off.

So overall, I think I felt that unless you had a big massive shining talent in science you were ignored, I had, and to an extent still do have a like of science I think its interesting. But the teaching just seemed results focused and focused on the star pupils. Which looking back seems crazy because I was definately more-able at school. I didn't feel I was encouraged...and a lot of my issues came down to the fact that I was an unconfident teenager. Other subjects seemed to understand that and support me.

I have recently gone back to biology because I am doing a nursing degree and enjoy it so much more. I don't feel like the tutors think I am incapable. And it linked to something tangible, learning how the heart works just makes so much more sense now that I can link it to nursing. Obviously unsuitable for schools though!

Haven't read the thread, so not sure if I am repeating, but I'll blather on a bit anyway

What I didn't like was that we'd do the experiments, then have to write them up AND draw a picture. I cannot tell you the number of times I drew a bloody bunsen burner.

I was crap at physics (too much like extra scary maths) and had an appalling science teacher for GCSEs - she used to nip off into the prep room, read the text book, then come and tell us what it said You couldn't ask her questions, because she didn't know what she was saying! So we used to put notes on her back that said, "I'm stupid" and attach clamp stands to her lab coat while she was wearing it.

She was observed by the head of science once, but knew she was going to be, so did some prep - that's why I don't feel sorry for her, because I know she could teach, she was just bone idle We didn't start on the notes or stand attachments till she'd well and truly lost our respect, btw

Other than that, I didn't like working at the pace of the stupidest boy in the class. Just too frustrating. We did a no exam GCSE in all three science subjects, with different level papers after each module (three levels, foundation, intermediate and special, I think, which determined the highest and lowest grade you could get).

And loathed dissection. Or anything grubbing around in earth outside for beetles. But did like growing things in petri dishes and lots of the chemistry and biology side of science. Did some forensics at university and loved that too.

OK, enough blather

Oh, also did philosophy of science at university which was FASCINATING! Lots about paradigm shifts - found the story of how oxygen overtook phlogiston as very interesting.