Correct me if I'm wrong, but generally speaking, once you get past junior high school (ie past grade 8 or 9) don't students in north America generally have the option to bypass science courses altogether? At least in my personal experience I never learned any real hard science in terms of chemistry or physics until grades 11 and 12, and those courses were entirely optional. "Science" classes in elementary and junior high were jokes, really, where I can't recally learning much more than a smattering of biology and some basic scientific concepts. No real lab exercises to speak of. Most of my schoolmates who weren't planning further studies in the sciences never took physics, chemistry or biology. Personally I never took high school biology, not having an interest in it. Forcing people who have no interest in the sciences to study them is unlikely to produce graduates who have any real understanding of those sciences, IMO.
Personally I just wish that scientific illiterates like most reporters weren't allowed to comment on science stories that they not the slightest understanding of.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but generally speaking, once you get past junior high school (ie past grade 8 or 9) don't students in north America generally have the option to bypass science courses altogether?"
That's how it was when I went to school in the 1960's and '70's. I took biology in ninth grade and supposedly I was done. Only reason I took physics and chemistry my senior year in high school is that I aced the science part of the ACT and my counselor suggested them (loved physics; hated chemistry). But I'm pretty sure that high score was due to my addiction to Isaac Asimov's non-fiction, not school. ;)
I homeschool, but I've seen the requirements for public schools my state, and the science requirments at the grade school level are laughable. Sort of a symbolic effort until sixth grade, and not very serious after that.