Colonial Models of Science Education (Episode 8)
Welcome back to the Coloniality, Western Science, and Critical Ethnic Studies in STEM Education dissertation!
This episode explores how the coloniality of Western Science manifests in STEM education teaching, learning, reform, and research. I describe three models: the Assimilationist, the Capitalist, and the Imperialist model.
TRANSCRIPT
Hey listeners!
I'm LaToya Strong and I'm a doctoral candidate at The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York.
You are listening to my dissertation!
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In this episode we’re going to get right into it and zoom in on science education.
As the coloniality of Western Science proceeds unaddressed and unchallenged science education teaching, learning, reform, and research exists in three ways: 1) Assimilationism 2) Capitalism and 3) Imperialism.
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The Assimilationist Model seeks to use the knowledges and ways of being of a culture or community, but only to incorporate learners into the dominant knowledge system of Western Science.
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The Capitalist Model focuses on learners as tools to compete economically with other learners both nationally and internationally.
The Imperialist model links science education to the US military. I’ll go through each of these separately.
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We’re going to start with the The imperialist model of science education because it feeds most directly off of the previous episode. This model centers the US military as a focal point for STEM education. The purpose of STEM and the funding of STEM programs are often tied to the ability of the United States to assert itself as a global power or ensure the national security of the United States.
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On the About section their website, the Council on Foreign Relations or CFR describes themselves as an,
Independent, nonpartisan member organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. Founded in 1921, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Our goal is to start a conversation in this country about the need for Americans to better understand the world. (CFR, n.d.)
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In 2012 CFR launched their Renewing American Initiative, an initiative that they renewed on January 6, 2022. The purpose of the 2012 initiative was to “examine the domestic underpinnings of U.S. global power, looking at issues such as infrastructure, trade, investment, deficits, human capital and, in this case, education.”
The CFR sponsored an independent task force which was chaired by Condoleeza Rice, former US Secretary of State, and Joel Klein, former chancellor of New York City schools. “The question that organized the task force was “Why is K-12 public school education a national security issue?” (Klein & Rice, 2014, p. xiii).
I’m highlighting this task force because the language that is used and the reasons that are given show up in some way, shape or form in all policies or acts geared towards fixing the failed US education system, which is apparently always failing. The task force identified five threats to US national security: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness, and U.S unity and cohesion.
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Here are some points that they identified:
Economic growth and competitiveness: US schools fail to provide students with the skills, tools, and knowledge needed to to grow the US talent pool. This limits the innovation and economic competitiveness of the US
The second point is physical safety - U.S. schools are also failing to prepare enough scientists, mathematicians, and engineers to staff the military, intelligence agencies, and other government-run national security offices, as well as the aerospace and defense industries (p. 9-10)
Point number three was about classified information and intellectual property. Us public schools are failing to produce students who can qualify for information security jobs, which puts the USA at threat because cyber espionage is a reality of US government and businesses.
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Well our national security on a number of fronts. First, as you said Terry, if we are not one nation, then we cannot defend one nation, and we don't have the confidence and the unity and the optimism to do what we have done, which is to go out into the world and to advocate for free markets and free peoples and to have that leadership role.
But it–there are also some much more sort of technical aspects to this or tangible aspect
to this. First of all, we're not educating enough people in the sciences and math and engineering and basic reading skills, for that matter, to take on the jobs that are available in the 21st century so that we have the competitiveness and the informativeness to continue to lead.
We know that we have difficulties in recruiting into the military from across folks of economic strata because of the failure to educate to the levels that the military needs, not to mention in foreign languages or cultures so that we have a ready group of people for the foreign service or for intelligence agencies. Think of the computer literacy that it takes to contribute to the problems of cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection.
So across the board, human potential is what makes a nation great today. It's not what
you can dig out of the ground, which it was in the 19th century. It's not what you can manufacture widgets along an assembly line, as it was in the 20th century. It is human capital. And the key to human capital is education. And that's why we believe that national security is indeed affected by the difficulties that our educational system experiences. (Rice, 2012)
[06:32]
That is Condoleeza Rice on a panel about the report, which is titled U.S. Education Reform and National Security. She's talking about the connection between STEM education and the military. Science, technology, math, and foreign language skills to conduct foreign affairs were highlighted as solutions to this national security threat, similar to the NDEA of 1958. In this report they return to the ideas posed in the NDEA and connect the revitalization of a failing education system to the ability to defend the United States.
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They provided three major recommendations.
The first recommendation was about accountability. Accountability of schools and districts to ensure the success of students and schools. The name reform efforts that they felt were important in achieving this. At the federal level, they named Race to The Top, an initiative under the Obama administration that earmarked 4.3 billion dollars for states. States had to apply for the money and in this application needed to demonstrate how they had or were planning to adopt college and career ready standards for all students. At the national level, they named the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, which many states did add in their application to Race to the Top.
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The second recommendation was the push for school choice. Parents should be able to opt out of failing schools and opt into other options such as charter schools or district-run schools.
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Their third recommendation was to launch a national security readiness audit. This audit would synthesize school data into a single report that would be available to everyone. Now, this would be all schools in the United States mind you. This would be carried out annually through a collaboration with the Department of Defense, the Department of Education, and various state departments.
I should also note that there were some folks on this task force that gave some dissenting views to what was published. So not everyone was in agreement with this. You can also find that in the document.
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The assimilationist model of science education puts Western systems of knowledge production above others and becomes a tool of assimilation. A person, in this case a learner, who is not represented in this contrived notion of who is considered Man or human as elaborated on in episode four must fit into this system, that is assimilate, of Western Science or remain outside unrecognized or labeled as Other.
Despite this, access to Western Science is touted as a means to economic and social success, which has prompted educators and educational researchers to search for ways to improve the success of students.
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Two popular solutions have been the incorporation of hip hop culture and Indigenous Knowledges into science education classrooms to help foster success for Black and Indigenous learners.
Hip-Hop Based Education or HHBE “refers to the use of hip-hop, especially rap songs and lyrics, as curricular and pedagogical resources” (Irby & Hall, 2010). HHBE is used as a tool to promote critical dialogue and raise consciousness through focusing on “social, cultural and political issues that impact students’ communities” (Love, 2014, p. 55).
However, in science education, HHBE has been used as a way to increase Black students’ engagement and success in the science classroom but disconnected from raising critical consciousness (Davis et al., 2014).
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The effort to get students and teachers to recognize the culture of students so as to engage them in the subject still places the onus on students to assimilate instead of challenging the institution of science and so leaves coloniality untouched.
In both New Zealand and Taiwan, government funded programs have been put into place to formally recognize the language, culture and identity of Indigenous peoples. Despite these efforts, Indigenous students still lag behind their non-Indigenous counterparts in science and other curricular areas (Kidman et al., 2013).
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A study was conducted by Kidman et al. and they found that students viewed the learning of their Indigenous language as important, but only because of the extra credits it would give students for graduation. The value placed on the language was directly tied to high stakes assessment thereby linking it to the dominant knowledge system purported in the wider education system. In doing so the language was not incorporated as a distinct body of knowledge with value (Kidman, Chiung-Fen, Y., & Abrams, 2013, 2013).
Although Indigenous and hip hop knowledge are thought of as epistemologies in their own right, they are still treated as subordinate and/or less than because they are used as tools for entry into science, rather than tools of science in their own right. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing except in the cases like the example described, the knowledge systems are not seen as equal.
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This is what Glen Coulthard (2014) calls the politics of recognition.
The politics of recognition refers to the recognition based models of liberal pluralism. The nation state accommodates Indigenous identity claims through renewed legal, political relationships with the state.
The politics of recognition does not yield mutual relationships. The statewants labor (not recognition, while the oppressed want recognition. Thus the state will give recognition so long as it does not upend the colonial relationship itself.
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Applied to science education, the anti-Black, settler colonial state will incorporate Hip Hop and Indigenous Knowledges so long as Western Science itself does not have to be restructured. Essentially, we are asking for participation in an epistemology, which at its root and in its practices, was meant to keep other epistemologies from the colonized subordinate.
These models of research which seek to engage learners in Western Science without disrupting the institution itself are examples of assimilationist models in which the cultural knowledge and practices of students are only valid insofar as they are used to subsume the students in the already existing framework of Western Science.
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I am not arguing that these things should not be done, but I am making the point that we need to be clear about what exactly we are doing, why we are doing it, and name it as such.
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Under the capitalist model, science is positioned in two ways. As a tool that will give students access to better jobs and quality of life. So science becomes something of a savior. And this model also uses youth as tools to compete economically which contributes to the global competitiveness of the United States, something we’ve covered.
We’re going to borrow savage developmentalism from HLT Quan (2012). Quan considers savage developmentalism as expansionist and antidemocratic growth that produces “violence, misery and death-the very negation of being” (p. 29). Quan’s focus is on the nation state, specifically in urban areas. But like all the other concepts and frameworks I’ve been using, I’m going to adapt this to science education.
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We’re going to turn our attention to the Bay Area. The savage development occurring in the Bay Area is a result of the presumed linear progression of modernity. Here go modernity again, just can’t get nothing right.
Modernity “assimilates all experiences and differences under one universalizing model that holds the Western experience as the apex of development to date and that prescribes an invariant, linear sequence of development based on the emulation of a particular development history” (Peters, 2008, p. 15).
So what does that mean? ‘Cause that was a long quote?
There is a false chronology or order to how those that are “underdeveloped” can achieve “developed” status by following the same path of the developed nations. Underdeveloped and developed are in quotations yall.
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The fallacy in such an argument is that space subsumes time and countries and communities that are underdeveloped because of colonization can never catch up to a developed country or community because time does not stop moving forward. And those so-called developed countries also move forward with time.
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Example. A kind of example. Let’s go to Mystic Falls. Katerina Petrova is 500 years old in vampire years. Caroline Forbes is ONe year old in vampire years. In this world, the older you are the stronger you are. So Caroline can never be as strong as Katherine because time moves forward and they move forward with it. In 500 years, Caroline will be as strong as the 500 year old Katherine, but Katherine will now be 1000 years old. So still older and stronger than Caroline, Caroline can never catch up.
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There is an additional dimension to this. The West, if you will, and we talked about the contradictions of using that word “The West”. The West is the employee handbook on how to proceed to a developed future. In this handbook we are absolutely going to ignore the past and only focus on the progress and achievements of the West. So modernity, but not the darker side of modernity, which was necessary for the West to develop (Seth, 2009).
Let’s funnel this down to science education. And we’re going to look at the tech industry, computer science initiatives in STEM education, and the economic enclave of Silicon Valley and the impact it has had on science education.
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Those with monetary means and access to the tech industry get to determine the education for those without. Those with success can now teach those poorer ones how to become successful as well.
Computer science has come to the forefront of education funding and education non-profits due to the success of the tech industry and various successful tech start-ups. Through an examination of computer science education initiatives, and the consequences of the tech industry, we can see how the racial capitalist nature of Western Science influences science education.
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New York City rolled out its Computer Science for All: Fundamentals for our Future. The goal of this policy is that by 2025 “every public school student in New York City will learn computer science, making ours the largest school district in the nation to teach this critical subject to all students in all public schools.” That’s a quote from the New York City Department of Ed. And this is all for the purpose of creating workers for job markets increasingly relying on technologies (NYC DOE, 2016).
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At the national level, President Obama, under his tenure, released a Computer Science for All proposal which marked four billion dollars to states over three years to increase access to computer science at the K-12 level (Smith, 2016). According to the US Department of Education, computer science in the classrooms takes steps towards filling the 600,000 high paying tech jobs that were available, but unfilled in 2015.
Okay here are some things that we need to think about. And it’s more than two this time.
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One. Giving students access to jobs is not an issue, however, there is no clear evidence as to what these jobs are that went unfilled, how the number was calculated, or what “computer science” means (Anderson, 2016).
Because a distinction has been made between computer science and computer programming, and between coding and computational thinking. Yet, because these are not outlined in these government roll outs there is a lack of clarity as to what this may mean in the long run, which some fear may create “technical ghettos” where Black students are left with the bottom of the rung, lower paying jobs (Anderson, 2016).
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Two. While Silicon Valley has been a source of wealth, computer science and consequently coding, has only just trickled down to the most marginalized in response to the job market. While this push for coding has been touted as a way to gain access to the middle class, it drives wages down by oversaturating the market with workers; a market that already sees 50% more computer science graduates than available jobs (Tarnoff, 2017).
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Three.
This is also happening at a time when those involved in the industry are predicting an end to coding (Tanz, 2016). This prediction is based on the fact that Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies have been pursuing machine learning, which differs from the algorithmic instructions encoded into computers. With machine learning instead of encoding computers, the computers would be trained by the engineers (Tanz, 2016). The implication of this is that the workforce would require new skills and skills in coding would no longer guarantee jobs as computers replace engineers.
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The push for computer science represents the linearity of capitalist development that creates a future for students out of a past that corporations are potentially leaving behind.
Not only are “urban students” being prepared for jobs that may be obsolete, but the tech industry boom has also impacted the life of these very same learners.
While we push students to technology, we ignore the consequences for neighborhoods in the Bay Area at the hands of the tech industry. San Francisco is a hotbed for activism and resistance against the gentrification taking place there because of the tech industry.
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Various companies such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo, among others, use public bus stops and lanes for their shuttle buses to transport their employees to work. These corporations pay less for the use of this public space than community members pay for public transportation, while also pushing those community members to the outskirts of the city (Maharawal, 2014). As a result of these tech buses, rental units within walking distance of these shuttles are 20% higher than units farther away fueling gentrification and displacement (Maharawal, 2014).
The Black population in both San Francisco and Oakland have been negatively impacted by this tech boom and resulting gentrification. In 1970 one in seven residents in San Francisco was Black, and in 2016 one in twenty residents are Black (Fuller, 2016). The Black population in Oakland decreased by 40% (Causa Justa::Just Cause, 2014). Specifically, in North Oakland, Black homeownership decreased from 50% to 25%, with similar trajectories in West Oakland and in Bayview-Hunts Point in San Francisco (Causa Justa::Just Cause, 2014). While at the same time that Black communities are being displaced and policed because of gentrification due to the tech industry, the tech industry is being pushed as a solution to poverty and joblessness.
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If the solution is fueling a problem that it is said to solve, then it’s not a solution. I’m not saying learners should not have access to computer science training, or anything else that I named. But I am saying, we have to be more clear about what we are doing and why we are doing it.
These colonial models of science education are not mutually exclusive, nor is it an exhaustive list. I’m sure there are plenty of other ways that we can categorize what goes on in science education. We get these models because of coloniality. We cannot get a science education that centers capitalism, imperialism, and assimilation without a Western Science that is rooted in those things.
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This coloniality of science education renders the hidden curriculum and not so hidden curriculum visible. What gets created are programs, curricula, research, and reforms that have failed Black, Indigenous, and other students of color through the functioning of assimilation, capitalism, and imperialism.
And that folks is our episode for today. Next week is the final episode and I’ll be wrapping this all up.
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Thank you for tuning in to this episode.
For coherency and flow of narrative, I did not always name who I was citing or drawing from so please visit the transcript to see all citations and references.
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