Introduction note from the Editor

References

Locke, J. (1980). Second treatise of government. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

Marx, K. (2007). Das kapital. Synergy International of the Americas.

Marx, K. (1994). Selected writings. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

STEM, Meet Ecojustice

Mark Wolfmeyer

Muhlenberg College


Abstract: In this article, I theorize a meeting between mainstream STEM education and ecojustice education. By considering their main points, I elaborate on how the STEM discourse dangerously contributes to the ecological crisis by conflating science with technology and a resulting myth of progress. I argue for an ecojustice STEM that embraces E.F. Schumacher's “technology with a human face," redefines the role of mathematics, especially as it contributes to human spirituality, and subordinates science to the needs of the biotic community.

Today, the pervasive STEM education lurks in all corners, growing like a cancer throughout all conversations and practices of education across the globe. For the improbably uninitiated, the STEM acronym merges content from among the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics into one set of urgent educational imperatives. Typically, talk about STEM education relates to matters of economic competitiveness in the global market. As such, it would be easy to prove that STEM education receives the most attention, most money and most concern from policy-makers and parents. This paper embraces the cancer that is STEM education, letting its discourse enter our conversations on how education can address the social and ecological crises. STEM as a discourse provides a set of curricular objectives that is easily matched to the causes of said crises. On the other hand, in what ways can these objectives, albeit in some instances modified, line up with education that disrupts cultural patterns of domination? In what follows, I will argue the ways that this is so. The current fury over STEM education demands such a counter-impetus.

The necessity for a STEM counter-narrative comes with, for example, the urgency felt and expressed by parents over the issue. In my own browsing of parenting websites, I have come across the occasional thread about how to support their child's learning of STEM through "STEM activities" at home. A study sponsored by none other than Microsoft provides more thorough descriptions of this parental concern. Harris Interactive’s "STEM Perceptions: Student and Parent Study," financed by Bill Gates' company, reports that 93% of parents of K-12 children believe STEM education should be made a priority. 53% of parents believe this so that the "U.S. remains competitive in the global marketplace" and a full 24% of parents would be "extremely willing to spend extra money helping their children to be successful in their math and science classes" (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/). To be sure, the data collection and methods for analysis should be heavily scrutinized in this study, given that Microsoft has a vested interest in promoting the funding for, and other policy initiatives for improving, STEM education. That said, the study does suggest a distinct possibility that STEM education is an issue most parents are aware of, along with its ties to economic competitiveness and job opportunities for their children.

This concern over STEM education comes at a time when adults, both parents and non-parents, are also increasingly concerned over issues related to the ecological crisis. In 2006, Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth catapulted the issues of climate change onto media's main-stage. Recent surveys indicate rising concerns over such issues. For example, a 2012 report released by the Yale Project on Climate Change indicates that "Americans’ belief in the reality of global warming has increased by 13 percentage points over the past two and a half years, from 57 percent in January 2010 to 70 percent in September 2012" (Lieserowitz et. al, 2012, p. 3). Because the public concerns over STEM education coincide with an equivalent concern over climate change, I am suggesting we consider how the two might relate to each other, or even be one and the same.

Two additional findings from the Yale Project on Climate Change suggest this possibility. The first is that “Americans increasingly perceive global warming as a threat to themselves (42%, up 13 points since March 2012), their families (46%, up 13 points), and/or people in their communities (48%, up 14 percentage points)” (p. 3). The STEM concern focuses on parents' worry over the well-being of their children, as suggested by the Microsoft study. This is also the case here, with 46% of Americans believing that global warming will endanger their families. When envisioning their children as adults, parents are expecting it difficult for them to both find jobs and survive the polluted earth. In a sense, adults are more readily envisioning a grim future for future generations.

The second relevant point from the study centers on a belief in science and scientists as the solution to environmental destruction. “Three out of four Americans (76%) say they trust climate scientists as a source of information about global warming, making them the most trusted source asked about in the survey. Scientists (who do not specialize in climate) are also trusted by a majority of Americans (67%).” The authors of the study use this finding to suggest how public opinion regarding climate change scientists is shifting. That is, much attention in the media has been given to those who think climate change scientists falsify data to support their claims, and that climate change, as a machination, should not be trusted. The study suggests that this is less and less the case; adults are believing in the process of science and, I argue, are considering how science can address the impending doom that more and more are expecting we will face.

In other words, while it is true that STEM education is framed and almost always talked about with respect to the economy, it is also possible that the public sympathizes so readily with the STEM craze because it somehow might address the ecological crisis. Theories about educational philosophy and the ecological crisis, as put forth by C. A. Bowers (1993) and Rebecca Martucewicz, Jeff Edmundson and John Lupinacci (2011), have much to say about the role of science and other STEM fields in the causes of the ecological crisis, rather than the solutions. I will return to this point later, but for now my point is that the STEM education craze is possibly related to concerns over the ecological crisis. Thus, the following opportunity exists. We can accept the STEM discourse for the possibility that it can address the public perception of ecological crisis. Next, we can appropriate the discourse first by validating it: we can delineate the ways that STEM can address the ecological crisis. However, this must occur simultaneously with knocking STEM down from its pedestal. We must also articulate the roles that science, technology, engineering and mathematics have played in the ecological crisis, and make trouble for the discourse itself, especially as it conflates science with technology in the mythological notion of progress.

Now that I have outlined the motivation for this paper, I will more abruptly juxtapose the framework of mainstream STEM education with the theorizing from ecojustice education. By considering their main points, I will next elaborate on how the STEM discourse dangerously contributes to the ecological crisis by conflating science with technology and a resulting myth of progress. In contrast, I review Schumacher's notion of “technology with a human face” and argue for its place in the STEM counter-narrative, what I call an ecojustice STEM. Finally, I provide examples of how we can re-appropriate the STEM discourse within institutions, especially in K-12 STEM education and STEM teacher education.

Mainstream Stem Education

As I introduced earlier, mainstream STEM education is consistently tied to issues of market economics. Most writings on STEM education begin with a clear articulation of said motivations. A good example of this is the popular book for educators: STEM the tide: Reforming Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education in America by David Drew. The first chapter opens with the following quote from Bill Gates: “'When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow'” (Drew, 2011, p. 1). First, there is the quote's source. Bill Gates, as the founder and CEO of the world's largest Information and Communications Technology corporation, is speaking directly to the workforce related to STEM fields. Second, the quote positions all workers in the global marketplace, thereby indicating STEM's urgent connection to US economic survival. This is the fear that fuels STEM, a fear that, in part, motivates the parents as indicated in the study from this paper's introduction.

Drew elaborates and further confirms the framework for STEM in his opening statements. First, “Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is vital preparation for today's high-tech information economy. Unfortunately, American students lag their counterparts in most other countries in achievement” (Drew, 2011, p. 1). As with the Gates quote, the fear is presented as an American one, with future adults out-competed by better-STEM-prepared future adults from other countries. The logic behind these concerns fails to consider the ways that corporations, by breaking down legislative blocks for hiring practices, have contributed to such global competition. In other words, it is easy to argue how motivating the American public through fear of economic collapse and joblessness further contributes to the profits of global corporations. Indeed, Drew's writings confirm these considerations:

The United States (and, indeed, much of the world) is reeling from a severe economic crisis. Most adults define themselves in great part by their work, and suddenly, the form and demands of that work have changed. Simultaneously, Americans have become increasingly concerned about the dire state of education. American high school students consistently rank at or near the bottom in international assessment of educational achievement. With fewer qualified workers domestically, US businesses are hiring more scientists, engineers, and other skilled workers from foreign countries.

The last 20 years have seen a dazzling array of innovations in technology, communications, financial products, and corporate structures, including the Internet, corporate outsourcing to remote locations throughout the world, and open source software platforms. But these innovations pose challenges to the status quo of an older, shrinking industrial economy (Drew, 2001, p. 1).
Further commitments to corporate globalization are expressed in the passage, as well as suggestions that work itself is changing. In listing types of work, Drew prioritizes the financial and information and communications technology industries. This is an important aspect of STEM education, one which I suspect is not conveyed to or understood by the public as well as the crisis itself. For example, should the public be expected to accept the STEM education crisis alongside a faith in the financial industry, given the skepticism resulting from recent crises and taxpayer bailouts?

However, Drew's framing of the STEM education crisis indicates commitment to such industries. This is largely the case because portrayal of the STEM crisis is created and financed by those corporations with a vested interest in such a STEM education. Tracing back the STEM crisis to those that support it with real and large dollar amounts indicates these motivations. For example, the STEM Education Coalition brings together educational organizations like the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) with corporations Microsoft, Battelle and Time Warner Cable (www.stemedcoalition.org/membership). In particular, the coalition uses its resources to enact legislation in the US Congress that supports STEM education. Examples of federal support of STEM education are easy to locate. One example are the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program

(www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5733). As an organization wholly financed by the federal budget, in this program NSF grants scholarships to future teachers in STEM fields. We are hard-pressed to find equally well-funded federal programs funding for future teachers in non-STEM fields, including high needs staffing areas like special education.

This review of mainstream STEM education indicates its commitment to global industries and multi-national corporations, including the information and communication technology and financial industries. I have suggested that mainstream STEM education glosses over these commitments, where the public typically hear threats of an “ever-changing technology and industry” and jobless futures. I have also highlighted the extent to which the networking of advocacy groups has resulted in both federal funding for STEM education. Taken together, the vague motivations of STEM and these successes opens up opportunity for those who criticize global corporations and seek change. In other words, STEM is at the forefront of education and the place where resources are provided, so how can we use this to our advantage? I now turn to a review of educational philosophies that address the social and ecological crises.

Ecojustice Education

As with my previous review of mainstream STEM education, this review of theorizing on education that addresses the ecological and social crises, also known as ecojustice education, will highlight those specifics that contribute to the meeting of STEM and ecojustice. As I make my way through these considerations, I will begin to sketch an alternative STEM education that embraces the ecojustice perspective. I begin the review by drawing on the relevant ideas of C.A. Bowers especially because he devotes direct attention to science and technology.

Bowers (1993) articulates the lack of attention to matters of the ecological crisis among all major paradigms for education. These include “conservative advocates of social reform” such as E.D. Hirsch and William J. Bennett (p. 35), the liberal “technocrats’” emphasis on “competency-based teaching” (p. 74), and the emancipatory liberals who address the “social divisions and inequities” present in modern times (p. 89). Bowers argues that all paradigms fail to address the root cultural problems that contribute to both the social ills that the emancipatory liberals aim to address as well as the ecological crisis that all paradigms explicitly fail to address. The cultural basis for both the social and environmental crises are one and the same, and generally relate to notions of hierarchy, domination and subordination.

Writing on Bowers’ cultural basis of the ecological crisis, Martusewicz, Edmundson and Lupinacci (2011) list several “discourses” that emerge from Western modernist cultures’ “set of hierarchized dualisms” (p. 66). These are individualism, mechanism, progress, rationalism/scientism, commodification, consumerism, anthropocentrism, androcentrism and ethnocentrism (pp. 66-67). All of these can be argued for their relevance to STEM education, and I will elaborate on a few of these in what follows. Individualism “is the assumption that humans are autonomous agents, who are at their best when independent from community and culture, and who are naturally predisposed to the accumulation of goods and materials to satisfy their own needs and wants” (p. 71). Mainstream STEM education, with its commitments to corporate profit as outlined above, supports this discourse because the basis of competition is self-interest. Instead, the ecojustice STEM would encourage individual decision making that includes impacts on the social community and environment. Note that this type of thinking is based in cultural practices and would not counter scientific or mathematical principles. In other words, such a STEM education would not be un-scientific.

On the other hand, mechanism, or the assertion that “the world and everything in it functions like a machine” (p. 68) is a metaphor that is a bit more entangled with the course of science since the Enlightenment. A major project in science has been the use of this metaphor for explaining causal effects and thick descriptions of the ways things seem to work. It is hard to argue that the use of this metaphor, leading to things like the discovery of antibiotics, is entirely problematic. It also happens to be an essential feature of science. Outright rejection of the mechanistic metaphor in the ecojustice STEM would collapse the educational project by eliminating science. However, the over-use of the metaphor of mechanism, especially by asserting that the world is knowable and describable in these terms, and that every machine functions on its own and separate from others, is the problem. As Martusewicz, Edmundson and Lupinacci (2011) point out, scientists have begun to move outside the metaphor in this way: “Some Western scientists, particularly quantum physicists and ecologists, have stepped outside the limitations of mechanism by emphasizing the interconnections and interdependence of physical and living systems” (p. 69). The ecojustice STEM will realize the uses and limits of mechanism; whenever a scientific description uses the mechanistic metaphor as a means for explaining, the descriptions will be integrated with other, related descriptions.

Mechanism’s issues, particularly its attempts at explaining everything, relates directly to another metaphor, anthropocentrism. Here, humans are “at the center” (p. 74) and, coupled with mechanism, the scientific program asserts that humans can describe and explain all things. More importantly, however, anthropocentrism addresses the consistent quest for human domination over nature. Scientific explanation and description are in the service of domination over nature, or perhaps even stewardship, a notion of human care over nature that still reflects the hierarchized dualism human-nature (p. 74). As with individualism, it would not be un-scientific to reject anthropocentrism. Using science to minimize human impact on the rest of the world would reflect a cultural shift rather than a shift in the scientific process.

Interestingly, modifying the discourse of scientism/rationalism, as it has been described, would not conflict with the scientific process. Instead, scientism is merely a cultural outgrowth of science, in which science, or the rational way of knowing, is perceived to be the only way of knowing the world. The metaphor is neatly expressed by a They Might Be Giants song, geared towards children and on the scientist-approved album “Here Comes Science”, titled “Science is Real.” (They Might Be Giants, 2009). Lyrics from the song include “When I’m seeking knowledge, either simple or abstract, the facts are with science” and “The proof is with science, the truth is with science.” Science is the way of knowing and in mainstream STEM education this metaphor is clearly supported, as indicated in the following discussion of the philosophy of mathematics.

I will return to a few of these discourses and their interruptions of the mainstream STEM, but while on the subject of scientism/rationalism, I need to address the issue of mathematics in STEM education. I assert that mathematics is included in the assemblage to embolden STEM education's rationalist quality. The discipline of mathematics is most closely associated with objectivity and rationality. It is important to note, however, that pure mathematics, or that mathematics which has no application and exists in an imaginary world, is the only knowledge that can be argued to be fully objective and follow the required axioms of logic. Applied mathematics, mathematical modeling and statistics are all mathematical endeavors that cannot be free from bias or subjectivity. Furthermore, as I outline below, philosophies of mathematics trouble mathematics’ claims to universality and objectivity. This troubling applies to all mathematics, including pure mathematics.

Math is often thought of as the supreme instance of objectivity, of knowing the world objectively and through deduction. This supreme status has received significant pushback, especially by the work of philosophers of mathematics. In fact, argued are two natures of mathematics: mathematics as an objective, value-free knowledge, and mathematics as a social construction. Philosophy of mathematics literature rests primarily on a debate concerning the relationship between humanity and this particular knowledge. The longstanding and most popular epistemological viewpoint for mathematics conveys the Platonic image of objective knowledge. Sometimes referred to as an Absolutist paradigm (Ernest, 2008), this perspective also maintains that all heretofore produced mathematical knowledge began with explicit assumptions to result in logical deductions. More specific varieties of this broad paradigm include Frege and Russell's logicism, Brouwer's intuitionism and Hilbert's formalism. While all three philosophies of mathematics differ in respects regarding what counts as legitimate processes for the creation of mathematical knowledge, they all hold a commitment to mathematics as a knowledge that is objective and value-free.

Hersh (1994) asserts that Wittgenstein was the first to break from this view by acknowledging that "mathematics is something that people do" (p. 14). This kind of thinking transferred work from the philosophy of science, such as Lakatos, Popper and Kuhn, onto the philosophy of mathematics, ultimately leading to a trajectory towards what Ernest (1998) terms the Fallibilist paradigm:

Fallibilism views mathematics as the outcome of social processes. Mathematical knowledge is understood to be fallible and eternally open to revision, both in terms of its proofs and its concepts. Consequently this view embraces as legitimate philosophical concerns the practices of mathematicians, its history and applications, the place of mathematics in human culture, including issues of values and education - in short - it fully admits the human face and basis of mathematics. The fallibilist view does not reject the role of structure or proof in mathematics. Rather it rejects the notion that there is a unique, fixed and permanently enduring hierarchical structure. (p. 3)
In this sense, the fundamental debate regarding the nature of mathematics centers on whether mathematics is objective, pre-existing to humans and known because of our discovering it, or primarily a human social activity, constructed by communities of practice. Embracing the alternative side to the debate will naturally lead to freeing mathematics from the burdens of superiority and objectivity.

In turn, the ecojustice STEM will reject that math or science is objective and the only way of knowing. Viewing the contest within philosophy of mathematics brings to light the concerns over objectivity, at the very hearty of rationalism. This does not mean that science and mathematical processes are entirely invalid. As Martucewicz, Edmunson and Lupinacci (2011) suggest “To question the universal nature of science as a way of knowing is not to be ‘anti-science.’ Rather, we must see science as one way of knowing rather than the only valid one” (p. 70). Therefore, the ecojustice STEM will accept science and mathematics as a type of knowledge suspect to bias just as other knowledge, albeit these suspicions can take on different forms than do the suspicions of other knowledges.

A careful look at the discourses of individualism, anthropocentrism, mechanism, and scientism/rationalism has begun to sketch an ecojustice STEM. In summary it is again interesting to note that the last two of these relate directly to the work of science and mathematics, and the first two do not. Individualism and anthropocentrism are cultural activities that exist outside the natures of scientific and mathematical processes, and scientism/rationalism and mechanism are very much a part of those processes. The scientific and mathematical program, as it currently proceeds, operates under all four metaphors. This is especially the case with mainstream STEM education, as the corporate interests, individual competition and dominance over nature are clearly established. The ecojustice STEM will outright reject competition and human dominance over nature. It will pull back the tendencies of science to explain everything with the utmost authority.

One other cultural root metaphor, progress (Martucewicz, Edmundson & Lupinacci, 2011, pp. 72-73), is so much a part of mainstream STEM education that I will attend to it in the following section. To conclude the specifics of this section on ecojustice education, I return to describing the primary issues at the heart of ecojustice education with a look at writings from Murray Bookchin. My readings in ecojustice education all point to a major theme, best put by Bookchin, the “dissolution of hierarchy” (Bookchin, 2005). Reviewing the “hierarchized dualisms,” anthropocentrism, androcentrism, etc., seems to address the same cultural problem of domination in a variety of forms. In his own way, Bookchin lists out his understanding of the same concept:

My use of the word hierarchy in the subtitle of this work is meant to be provocative. There is a strong theoretical need to contrast hierarchy with the more widespread use of the words class and State; careless use of these terms can produce dangerous simplification of social reality. To use the words hierarchy, class and State interchangeably, as many social theorists do, is insidious and obscurantist. This practice, in the name of a 'classless' or 'libertarian' society, could easily conceal the existence of hierarchical relationships and hierarchical sensibility, both of which--even in the absence of economic exploitation or political coercion--would serve to perpetuate unfreedom.
By hierarchy, I mean the cultural, traditional and psychological systems of obedience and command, not merely the economic and political systems to which the terms class and State most appropriately refer. Accordingly, hierarchy and domination could easily continue to exist in a 'classless' or 'Stateless' society. I refer to the domination of the young by the old, of women by men, of one ethnic group by another, of 'masses' by bureaucrats who profess to speak in their 'higher social interests,' of countryside by town, and in a more subtle psychological sense, of body by mind, of spirit by a shallow instrumental rationality, and of nature by society and technology. Indeed, classless but hierarchical societies exist today (and they existed more covertly in the past); yet people who live in them neither enjoy freedom, nor do they exercise control over their lives” (pp. 67-68).
Just as ecojustice writings point to deeply embedded hierarchies, Bookchin indicates them as well. As the cultural patterns of domination and command are argued to lead to the ecological and social crises that Bowers and other ecojustice writings suggest, Bookchin describes how these patterns, whenever present, inhibit freedom.

To keep this notion of freedom consistent with ecojustice, Bowers (1993) has identified two versions of freedom, one the “guiding metaphor of a culture of progress and environmental exploitation,” and the other, a “new (and ancient) guiding metaphor for a sustainable culture” (p. 167). For the former, freedom is a “choice of ideas and values by the autonomous individual,” and for the latter sustainable culture: “freedom is a restriction of self for sake of others. Self as a cultural being whose individualized needs and forms of expression are part of a larger mental ecology. Interdependence.” The second understanding of freedom is consistent with Bookchin's dissolution of hierarchy.

The goals of ecojustice STEM include addressing the cultural patterns of hierarchy as they relate to nature and social organization, with freedom and lack of command towards or domination of anything as the ideal. Particularly, these goals address some practices of science, but generally they do not conflict with what is understood to be the mathematical and scientific processes. The biggest trouble with this meeting of STEM and ecojustice comes in the next section. The very heart of the mainstream STEM discourse, its conflating of science with technology and progress, requires careful consideration. While some particulars from ecojustice education can be reconciled, this one requires direct confrontation.