What are the aims of Teaching Science to students?

Teaching of Science falls into two main classes-usefulness to the Country and usefulness to the pupils. Aims of Science teaching, that remain planted in Teacher’s Manuals, without being used, do not help children. But aims that are in teacher’s mind and in the minds of children as well will help pupils. And above all, let the teachers’ purposes be as nearly as possible to those of the pupils and let pupils be helped with the plans for accomplishing those objectives.

These days, devoted Science-masters are hardly found and Science is an expensive subject in the school programmed. So it is important to be clear about the aims and objectives of teaching Science in Schools. Aims of teachers must be clear, if they are to teach well and if they are to answer the critics who hold that the subject of Science is unnecessary. So every Science teacher must be acquainted with the following aims and objectives of teaching of Science in Schools.

Aims of Science Teaching

(i) Science is taught in Schools because general education is not complete without it. In Schools, Science is taught to acquaint pupils with natural phenomena in their environment.

(ii) The aims introducing Science in Schools is not to turn out scientists, but to impart liberal education.

(iii) To acquaint pupils with the broad outline of great scientific principles and the ways in which these are exemplified and applied in the service of man.

(iv) The science learning is to prepare children to earn the living. They are cleverer and more intelligent who go to make themselves doctors, agricultural officers, engineers, etc. with their determined goal of life.

(v) Science teaching aims at helping children even in their ordinary life to use the gifts of science everyday.

(vi) The aim of science teaching is to make the pupils wonder about things and to make them put question out of curiosity. That is because; a man who knows nothing about the discoveries of chemistry, physics and biology in the last three hundred years cannot be called properly educated.

(vii) In the science teaching, the teacher’s attitudes towards the marvels of sciences are important in as much as pupils copy their teachers in attitude development.

(viii) While these facts of science are important, it is also important that pupils should understand the system of observation, guess and experiment which is known as scientific method. So, one of the aims of science teaching is to explain this method and to help pupils to think correctly about science in relation to other subjects of learning.

(ix) The teaching of science aims at helping pupils to live in the modern world, to introduce them the methods and systems of science and to develop some attitude we think valuable.

(x) Learning science has a value as character training. It develops an attitude which is a habit of thinking, feeling and acting, a mixture of curiosity and caution; curiosity leading to correct observations and caution prompts pupils objectively to say, “I do not know.”

These aims of science education in schools mentioned above can be achieved by the combined teaching in the classroom and the laboratory.