We tell our trusting learners they can be scientists at the same time that we teach a canon of arbitrary findings from a handful of “heroic” individual white men. The telling implies that these mythical science pioneers dreamed up Truth out of their supreme white minds. We erase contributions of women and people of color as we focus on science ordained by the institutions on the hill and imagine canonized men as lone wolves.
In truth, mythical heroes like Newton, Darwin, Fahrenheit, and Edison worked in community. They tried and failed and followed the scientific method we talk so frequently about, but ignore when we present ideas as “fact.” Science is all about accumulated evidence by separate groups’ findings. But science learners mostly don’t know it until they’re in graduate school. We teach “the Scientific Method” in week 1 of every Science class, but then we present scientists’ findings without their hypotheses, their data, what they disproved and what they tried as first steps. We ignore the people who influenced and debated with them, not to mention the people who supported them at home and in their labs. Darwin’s wife was a clever, vibrant part of his process if I read the history correctly.
Why are we telling learners the scientific method is important and then leaving it out of the narrative of science? Why are “facts” presented and memorized and why is a finite canon of understandings making up redundant curricula the world over?
The fact is that each individual scientist had influences, encouragement, dead-ends, and dissenters. They bounced ideas off of each other, their wives, the marginalized individuals who worked in their labs and mopped their floors and managed their stables. They came up with ideas over tea and they learned from watching people who never received any recognition.
Many educators are willing to admit now that Literature instruction has been based on an outdated white supremacist canon. Where is that conversation happening in science education?
My sincerest efforts in Practicing Science Together are to present the scientific findings of underrepresented individuals. Not only that, but when the mythical legends are presented, I intend to bring them into their communities and their timeframes so that we can understand their mortality.
Here’s the story that goes with this post: I had a “Scientist of the Day” every day for my 5th grade Life Science class to reflect on in their journals. It was my “warm-up,” as it were. It was a way to productively use the time it took for students to filter in, sit down, find their supplies, and transition their minds to Science. One day, a cynical and candid angel from Heaven raised his hand and asked me, “When are we going to learn about this Russian guy who invented the Periodic Table?”
“In your Chemistry class, I guess.” I said.
“We are wasting a lot of time with these [nobodies] and never learning about real scientists.”
This is where I squared my shoulders, inhaled deeply, and reminded myself that this angel baby was a product of his culture and nothing more or less. This, I reminded myself, is the point, so it’s an excellent opportunity to make the implicit explicit.
“How many scientists do you think there have been in the history of the world, Frank?” [names have been changed] “10? 100? 1,000? 1,000,000? Millions? How many zeroes?”
“Not millions.”
“Okay, great, you would estimate that there haven’t been millions and I would challenge that estimate. How many human beings are on the planet at this moment?”
An adorable photographic memory history buff angel in the back shot his hand up with an answer.
“Fantastic, Lynn, how many?” …”And what percentage of human beings on the planet does scientific work?”
Long story short, I crushed that kid. Just kidding. Also, no, yeah, I crushed him.
[Disclaimer: I didn’t actually “crush” anybody. I won a debate with a 10-year-old. And no human being has ever had more confidence than that particular 10-year-old. He was fine. He may or may not have realized that he wasn’t missing out on critical scientist biographies by learning about people he didn’t already know about. His colleagues in the class may or may not have similarly learned. The crushing thing was a joke. Because I’m a 45-year-old scientist and he was 10 and, still, it felt important to…you know…win.]