I would take a slightly different view.

I think it's pretty standard to regard an acceptable understanding of speech and writing as "literacy", and to demand a minimum sense of literacy as a demand of education. I make similar demand of "numeracy" - it's a reasonable demand that students have a broad understanding not just of the mechanics of arithmetic, but have at least heard of statistical measures like how averages are obtained. And I think that's pretty broadly accepted too - maths is important!

I go even further - having an understanding of how science works and functions; that is, being scientifically literate - is a great and terrific privilege. People can get uppity about it, and that's distasteful. But claiming that science is important and that its principles are relevant to life is a truism.

You can't turf out science as being annoying. It has to be advocated as a way of life - just like living without knowing how to read should be regarded as backwards in this day and age, so should living with no sense of science.