Why Do So Many Kids Think Chemistry Is the Worst Subject? Tips For Parents and Teachers
Last Tuesday, I was wiping down lab tables after school, waiting for the custodian to lock up, when Mia slouched into my empty 8th grade science classroom, quiz paper crumpled in one hand. She dropped into the chair closest to the door, pushed her half-colored periodic table away from her, and said, “Am I the only one who thinks that chemistry is the worst subject to ever exist?”
I didn’t laugh, or tell her she was being dramatic. I leaned against the lab counter, ate a stale goldfish cracker left over from that morning’s experiment, and said, “Nope. I thought the exact same thing when I was your age.”
Mia is a solid B+ student, she draws detailed comic strips for the school paper, and she spends every weekend volunteering at the community garden pulling weeds and planting native milkweed. She aces her algebra quizzes, she can name every native bee in our state, and she once spent three weeks tracking how much rain our school garden got for a science fair project. Chemistry? It broke her brain. That quiz she brought me was on ionic vs covalent bonding, and she’d missed almost every question because she couldn’t keep the two rules straight. To her, it was just a bunch of random symbols made up by dead guys, none of it connected to anything she cared about.
Over the 12 years I’ve taught middle school science, I’ve heard this exact complaint at least once a month, from kids who are great at every other subject, even other science classes. I’ve heard it from straight-A students, from kids who struggle with school in general, even from parents at conferences who lean in and whisper that they still think chemistry is the worst subject too, they just don’t say it out loud. So no, if you’re the kid or the parent reading this thinking the same thing, you are definitely not alone.
The thing no one talks about, though, is that chemistry doesn’t have to be this way. It’s not that it’s inherently harder than algebra or biology or history. It’s that the way it’s usually taught makes it feel totally disconnected from real life. With biology, you get to look at cells under a microscope, dissect an owl pellet, go outside and look at trees. With algebra, you use it to calculate how much allowance you need to save for a new game. Chemistry, for most kids, starts with memorize 30 element symbols, memorize the groups on the periodic table, memorize bonding rules before they ever see what chemistry actually does. It’s all abstract, all made up, all just rules to pass a test.
When Mia’s mom came in for our parent-teacher conference a week after that after-school chat, she was worried. She said Mia had been talking about dropping honors science next year because she couldn’t handle chemistry, that she was convinced she was “bad at science” forever. I walked her through the small things we’d started doing that were already making a difference, things any parent or teacher can do, no fancy lab equipment needed.
First, let them hate it for a little while. Don’t jump in immediately to say “oh chemistry is so fun, you just have to give it a chance.” When Mia said it was the worst subject ever, I didn’t correct her. I agreed that it’s totally fair to hate a subject that feels like a bunch of random rules thrown at you. Instead of saying “you’ll get it if you try harder,” I said, “That sounds so frustrating. It makes total sense this feels like a waste of time right now.” Just that small shift takes the pressure off. Kids don’t need you to fix their bad mood immediately; they just need you to not argue with how they feel.
Second, connect every chemistry concept to something they already care about. Mia loves doing her own nail art, so I asked her why she thought glitter nail polish takes three cotton balls and five minutes to get off, instead of coming off like regular polish. She’d never thought about it. We spent the next extra help session looking at how glitter nail polish uses acrylic polymers to make it stick, how that changes the way solvents in nail polish remover break it down. Suddenly, ionic vs polar covalent bonds weren’t just symbols on a page—they were why she spent 10 minutes scrubbing glitter off her nails every other weekend. If your kid loves baking, talk about why baking soda makes cookies rise (it’s an acid-base reaction that releases carbon dioxide). If they love soccer, talk about how the synthetic rubber in their cleats is made of polymer chains, how that makes it last longer than leather. You don’t need to be a chemistry expert to do this; you can both look it up on your phone if you don’t know the answer.
Third, skip the mandatory big memorization at first. For years, I started the year by making kids memorize the first 30 elements of the periodic table. Now I don’t. I let them reference the periodic table on every quiz and test for the first semester, and we memorize elements as we need them. It’s like learning to read: you don’t memorize every word before you start reading sentences, you learn words as you go. Same with chemistry. Cramming 30 element names at the start of the year just makes kids bored and frustrated before they even get to the interesting stuff.
Mia still complains about chemistry every time she comes to extra help. She still calls it the worst subject in school. Last week she got a 78 on her bonding test, and she celebrated by drawing a little cartoon of the periodic table as a grumpy villain in the margin of her notebook. It’s not perfect, she’s not suddenly going to become a chemist, and that’s okay. The point isn’t to make every kid love every subject. It’s just to take the edge off, so they don’t shut down and decide they’re bad at all science because one subject feels terrible right now. Some subjects are just hard, and it’s okay to still think they’re kind of terrible even when you’re getting better at them.
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