[sfpotter]

You can easily get kids engaged with both math and science. They aren't mutually exclusive.

There's nothing wrong with "infotainment". Some of the things which I experienced in elementary school which stuck with me the longest were when our gym teacher would play educational videos about human anatomy. A lot of these videos featured "Osmosis Jones"-style flythroughs of different organs. "Here's the stomach, it's filled with acid, etc." Netflix has The Magic Schoolbus right now. My wife and I were amusing ourselves by watching it for a few minutes last night, and I realized that the first episode (they visit each planet in the solar system on their bus, which had transformed into a space ship) had stuck with me almost verbatim, even though I haven't seen it in over 20 years. There are basic concepts that are quickly and easily imparted in this form (the sun is huge, the planets are very far apart, etc.) because of the visual format. Nothing wrong with this.

All this "infotainment" really helped develop my imagination and powers of visualization, both of which have paid dividends for me in the long run.

How "useful" a class is has as much to do with the instructor and the resources available to them as it does the particular pedagogical style. Should also be kept in mind that not everyone is going to become a scientist or use math on the job. The solution here isn't to eliminate "useless" subjects from school, but to focus on how to give people a broad education so that they can become informed and critical thinkers.