Why You Should Take General Sciences in Grade School

I was recently in an argument about something I’d never questioned before. Regardless of location, most everyone is exposed to three basic, general sciences: Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. Why do we teach these sciences? They don’t give us a lot of practical benefits; not like more specific sciences like nutrition, anatomy and physiology, and environmental science.

Put on the spot, I couldn’t think of anything to counter the impracticality of the triad of general sciences forced upon every grade schooler. Adults often complain about the lack of practical knowledge taught at school; we don’t ever learn how to get a job, file our taxes, apply for a loan (or weigh the costs and benefits of one), make large purchases like a car or house, and many other vital life-skills. Perhaps we need to start changing curricula to include more practical sciences to accompany these life-skills. After all, it’s much more important to know why eating fast food every day can harm you than it is to know that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. In hindsight, there wasn’t much I do to change the person’s opinion. Since then, however, I have at least solidified and clarified my own viewpoint enough to write about it.

Modern curricula rightly stress the interconnections between every subject of study. For example, science itself is just as much history as it is math—it’s the evolution of concepts over time and space. The three sciences are very strongly connected as well. Understanding one science helps you understand the other two. Moreover, fluency in one science improves your ability to learn other sciences; being good at physics makes it easier to learn chemistry.

These sciences also represent the basis of other, more specific sciences. For example, nutrition is heavily based on chemistry and biology. In nutrition, you may learn that trans fats are bad for you because they increase risk of heart disease, but without biology, you wouldn’t know that this is because they cause a build up of LDL cholesterol in the arteries, and without chemistry, you wouldn’t know this happens because the double carbon bonds in trans fats cause them to form linear chains, which easily build up into plaque.

I took biology in 8th grade, chemistry in 9th grade, and physics in 10th grade. I was lucky to have incredible teachers with a passion for the subjects they taught, so I am happy with the general science eductation that I received. This system, however well it served me, has many flaws. First of all, there is plenty of argument for teaching the sciences in the opposite order—physics-chemistry-biology (P-C-B) rather than biology-chemistry-physics—because physics is more “pure” than the other two and can serve to capture students interest and show them the elegance of science. There are also many proponents of integrated science classes—teaching a little bit of all three sciences every single year—and integrated classes in general—teaching many subjects, such as sciences and social studies, in one class—to create a unified narrative of time and space.

I’ll never use this in real life.

I’m not a teacher, but that has to be near the top of the list of most annoying things that teachers have to hear. General sciences, as opposed to more specific sciences, have little obvious connection to real life. They seem impractical–and therefore unnecessary. It is true that you probably won’t use the kinematic equations on a normal work day or perform a stoicheometric analysis of your morning cup of coffee, but a general understanding of the sciences can help in every day situations. Having a general understanding of the three sciences can help you make smarter choices in a tough situations (like holding heavy objects lower so that you don’t get knocked down), diagnose problems with your body without needing to consult the internet (like putting a cool cloth on your neck after drinking too much to contrict blood vessels to your brain), or perform daily activites more effectively or safely (like knowing not to store acidic fluids in metal container).

Ultimately, though, my viewpoint stands on principle rather than practicality. Even if you’re still not convinced that it is necessary to be taught the general sciences, I believe that we, as humans, are obligated to learn them. The entire principle of practicality is a driving force behind the evolution of life on Earth. Species that have more practical features thrive in their environment. But as enivronments change, some adaptations become less practical, and the species that have them die out. Humans, however, seem to have transcended (or at least mitigated) the dying-out part. We still evolve, but this evolution is slow, and selected by reproduction rather than traditional natural selection; we take medicine and use surgery to preserve human lives that would otherwise be naturally selected against. Just as humans contradict natural selection when it comes to physical adaptations, I believe that we also contradict it when it comes to our knowledge. Traditionally, we would only store information that is relevant and practical, but as humans, we should strive to know more than we need to—specifically, more than our ancestors did. We may be very similar to other animals in many ways, but our minds are what set us apart from them. By tasking ourselves with learning what our predecessors learned faster than they learned it, and extending that knowledge with our own discoveries and innovations, we, as individuals, can contribute to something larger than ourselves, something that sets us apart even more. Our ability to collaborate lets each of our individual achievements contribute to a collective good that advances the species, but to innovate at all, one must first master the basics.