Then I left primary school, went to secondary and within five years my love of science was slowly drained out of me, like watching a slowly deflating balloon left down the back of the sofa. I remember Year 7 Science pretty vividly, as we had a revolving door line-up of teachers teaching us topics I either really liked or found mind-numbingly dull. I’d always loved learning about space, the order of the planets, comets, black holes etc., but there were things I was looking forward to that weren’t nearly as interesting as I was hoping they’d be. I found myself bored learning about gravity and forces, and how to calculate how fast a motor was running. At first I chalked it up to me preferring some aspects of science to others, but when I stopped finding even the elements interesting, I knew it couldn’t be that.
I quickly realised that I just did not find the teaching interesting whatsoever. These amazing scientific principles were being taught in the most flat and matter-of-fact way possible, and any practical experiments were way too few and far between. Of course, Covid affected us in our final year, meaning we didn’t have access to the labs - but the way that the subject was taught consistently bothered me. It was like the teachers would rather be doing anything else.
This was especially the case when it came to giving students help. I distinctly remember lessons in lockdown, where some of us told the teachers that we felt like we were doing the work but not learning anything, to which we would receive the half-hearted response of “You’ll get it eventually.” What kind of response is that? A kid who might genuinely be struggling with the concepts and the lessons is just told to do the same thing in the hopes they’ll get it, when the same thing obviously isn’t working?
By Year 10 and 11, I’d all but checked out of science. I suffered through to the end to get a solid GCSE and then never thought of it again, now being guided by my interest in history which had blossomed while my love of science had continued to wane. I still remember a lot of the things we did in primary, but most of our secondary school science content has already left my head and I do not look back on that subject fondly. If the way the subject had been taught was even remotely interactive and engaging, and if my teachers had made the lessons exciting, then I wouldn’t be sitting here moaning. Alas, I’m now at university powered by a love of writing - instilled in me by my former English teachers - and a love of modern history, also instilled in me by my former History teachers. There are many other happy memories of secondary school - just not from science. And for a kid who used to have such a passion for it, that says a lot.