Michael Reiss: Science is not just Bunsen burners and test tubes

From a lecture given at the Institute of Education by the Head of Science and Technology at the University of London

Five years ago, as part of a longitudinal study I am undertaking, I asked the parents of a group of 21 pupils about their memories of science at school. Most of them had had fairly negative experiences. For example, there was a boy called Peter, whose mother told me that she had stopped doing science before she did her CSEs. "All I remember is Bunsen burners and test tubes and being fined 5p." The fine was for breaking some science equipment

Paul's mother, when I asked her "Could you tell me a bit about your education please?" initially replied "Don't bother with me. Not worth it". The school she went to was for "the 11+ failures... There was no intake for a year because they weren't sure whether to close us." All pupils "had to do chemistry and biology or physics and chemistry. I did chemistry and biology. I couldn't understand chemistry. If I'd been allowed to do physics I would have understood it... chemistry teacher hated me and said in front of me 'She came from a council estate, so what can you expect.'"

Paul's mother told me that they "all failed biology because they put us in for the wrong syllabus."

There were some positive memories of school science among this sample, but, for both mothers and fathers, these were in the minority. What I found particularly interesting was that almost all the parents, despite their own fairly negative experiences, were emphatic that science should be taught to all pupils in schools.

When I asked why they felt this, the most frequently given answers were to do with science deepening one's understanding, for example: "Science is life really. It's everything around us. It's important to give children a chance to look deeply into natural science as well as all the other scientific areas." (Catherine's mother).

"It's a basic part of understanding the world we live in." (Edward's father).

Let me assert baldly that science is one way of representing reality. I am not so interested here in the fact that there are other ways of representing reality – something that is unlikely to be news to those with a knowledge of other disciplines, but is still deeply troubling to a number of vocal scientists who believe that only science can validly represent reality. Rather I am interested in the extent to which every representation of reality, whether Gursky's or Galileo's, requires the excision and positioning of reality.

Sadly, school and even college textbooks of science almost always fail to discuss this important way in which science is an abstraction of reality as well as an approximation to it.

We don't do a very good job of getting children in school science lessons to ask either the sort of questions that scientists actually ask, or the sort of questions the rest of us ask and to which science can make a contribution. Instead we restrict pupils to mind-blowingly dull questions about the bouncing of squash balls or the dissolving of sugar in what are misleadingly termed "scientific investigations".

We also succeed in persuading most people that they aren't good at science. Here, for example, is a "Science Quiz" published in the spring 2001 issue of Insight, "The Magazine for Education and Business" published by the Department for Education and Employment: Which is the most common alkali? Who invented the motorcycle? In which city did the world's first public television service start in 1936? I am delighted to say that I don't know the answer to any of these questions, nor have I the faintest interest in so doing.

Every presentation of science is a representation. The teacher not only presents a particular presentation but chooses, consciously or otherwise, whether to present just one scientific representation or to allow pupils to meet a diversity of representations.

The way to broaden school science curricula will be to design frameworks that allow teachers to teach a less constricted version of science.