ABSTRACT
The teaching of science is expensive, and the rewards and penalties for doing it well or badly could be breath-taking. Science can easily make or break the future for mankind. The real problem to be faced first is to analyse what success consists of. It has become fashionable in some quarters to talk about the ‘cost-effectiveness’ of education, and to try to assess the efficiency of the educational system by some form of input-output analysis. One obvious reason for teaching science is that a lot of scientific knowledge is available. The accumulated stock of knowledge about natural science is a significant part of the human heritage, and younger generations are given the chance to share in it by including it in accepted patterns of study in the educational system. One argument for teaching science might be that young people want to study it. So they do, in large numbers—but apparently the popularity of science shows some signs of declining.
