If education is anything like it was in my school years, I wonder if children are actively discouraged from pursuing science by educators that find the subject difficult or impractical to teach within their provided constraints.
I have a very clear memory of an after-school workshop I attended in early high school to prepare students for the ACT, a college entrance exam that was common in that time and place. This exam tested students on math, English, reading, and science reasoning. When it came time for the teachers to provide advice on science reasoning, they basically told the students to not bother, and just guess as best they can. I was completely floored at this extraordinarily defeatist attitude. Sure, this school had science classes, but they mostly taught science memorization (what does ATP stand for?) and not science reasoning.
To be fair, the science section of the ACT is testing the ability to understand graphs and read short passages on scientific topics. In this sense, it is more of a reading comprehension section than a science section. In my opinion, this is more fair than testing specific science topics that a student might not have been taught in their high school.
My memory on the test itself may be a bit hazy (~24 years ago) and my interpretation at that age may not have been accurate, but I do seem to recall some amount of reasoning was required. E.g., looking at a graph and drawing a conclusion from it. Not any great feat of reasoning, but still one that the school faculty felt was beyond the reach of their students.
I have a very clear memory of an after-school workshop I attended in early high school to prepare students for the ACT, a college entrance exam that was common in that time and place. This exam tested students on math, English, reading, and science reasoning. When it came time for the teachers to provide advice on science reasoning, they basically told the students to not bother, and just guess as best they can. I was completely floored at this extraordinarily defeatist attitude. Sure, this school had science classes, but they mostly taught science memorization (what does ATP stand for?) and not science reasoning.