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anon answered on 26 Jan 2018:
Science as a method of looking at information and figuring out what it means, and how certain you are about it is pretty much universally useful, I’d argue.
Science as a bunch of facts about the world that you personally find irrelevant – I can see why you’d be frustrated with that if you look at it that way.
I wouldn’t dismiss science even if at any point in life I think it’s not relevant to my career – I’ve looked back and can confidently say that I cannot predict precisely what would happen to me in five years, never mind the entire working life.
What should and shouldn’t be taught in schools is a decades- if not centuries-long debate, by the way. We are still not entirely sure what’s relevant and what’s not at that stage. Everyone tries to push forward the subject they are invested in – that’s my understanding of it.
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anon answered on 26 Jan 2018:
Firstly very few people know for sure what their career will involve when they are teenagers. The world of work is constantly changing, and your skills and interests might be different than you predict now.
Even if your future career never involves science, I think learning about science (to some extent) is good for everyone. It is about understanding the world around us but also it is about thinking clearly and gathering evidence. Making decisions based on evidence is important in lots of careers that don’t involve science directly.
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Paul commented on :
A great question, and some excellent answers here. We have a bit of a problem with ‘scientific literacy’ at the moment. Science is really more about having a curious, questioning nature than remembering what all the different cells do, or what all the elements are called. A surprising number of people still believe the world is flat, or that it was formed in 7 days, or that climate change isn’t a thing. This can be pretty dangerous if it affects decision-making on the level of say a whole country. So even if we don’t all want to be career scientists, staying engaged with science (and doing a little work) makes a difference for all of us in the long run.