Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 3, Issue 1, Foreword (June, 2002) Derek HODSON Some Thoughts on Scientific Literacy: Motives, Meanings and Curriculum Implications Previous Contents Next

Corporatism Versus Democracy?

In recent years, the economic argument for scientific literacy has become the predominant one in North America. It is a powerful and persuasive one, as illustrated by the government of Canada's (1991) attempt to establish a link between school science education and a culture of lifelong learning as the key to the country's prosperity.

Our future prosperity will depend on our ability to respond creatively to the opportunities and challenges posed by rapid change in fields such as information technologies, new materials, biotechnologies and telecommunications... To meet the challenges of a technologically driven economy, we must not only upgrade the skills of our work force, we must also foster a lifelong learning culture to encourage the continuous learning needed in an environment of constant change. (Government of Canada, 1991b, pp. 12 & 14)

All forms of discourse are essentially concerned with creating a particular view of the world and particular 'kinds of people': "Ways of talking, listening, reading, writing, acting, interacting, believing, valuing, and using tools and objects, in particular settings and at specific times, so as to display or to recognize a particular social identity" (Lankshear et al., 1996, p. 10). While learning to use a particular discourse is an effective means of enculturation into a community of practice, it can also be an instrumental form of indoctrination. The power of a particular discourse is located in the ways in which it determines how we think about society and our relations with others, and in its impact on how we act in the world. Thus, it can be deployed as a means of creating an alternative social reality. Lankshear et al. (1996) use the term fast capitalist texts to describe the business and management books, company policy documents and media pronouncements which have now become mainstream popular cultural interpretations of the proper nature of work and commerce in newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Language has been transformed by industry and corporate business leaders into a sociotechnical device capable of creating and sustaining new social relationships between managers and workers, and imposing particular capitalist values on workers. In other words, transnational businesses have created and sustained a discourse that serves their immediate and future needs, and have extended this discourse to schools and the education system. In order to design, develop, optimize, produce and market goods and services for the global marketplace, industry needs a flexible, 'just-in-time' and compliant workforce, and it is the education system's job to provide it. Seemingly, at least in Ontario, industry has been successful in exerting its will on the school curriculum, as witness this statement from the Ontario Ministry of Education (2000, p.3):

The new Ontario curriculum establishes high, internationally competitive standards of education for secondary school students across the province. The curriculum has been designed with the goal of ensuring that graduates from Ontario secondary schools are well prepared to lead satisfying and productive lives as both citizens and individuals, and to compete successfully in a global economy and a rapidly changing world.

The pressures exerted by business and industry on schools to provide more 'job ready' people can be seen as part of an overt sociotechnical engineering practice in which new capitalism is creating "new kinds of people by changing not just their overt viewpoints but their actual practices" (Lankshear et al., 1996, p. 22). It is reengineering people in its own image! Indeed, there are many who view these developments as symptomatic of a dangerous trend, both for individuals and for society as a whole, part of what Bencze (2001, p.350) calls "an apprenticeship for consumership - that is, creation of a large mass of... citizens who simultaneously serve as loyal workers and voracious, unquestioning consumers". In similar vein, Apple (1993) states that in this new economy-driven educational climate, students are no longer seen as people who will participate in the struggle to build and rebuild the social, educational, political and economic future, but as consumers; freedom is "no longer defined as participating in building the common good, but as living in an unfettered commercial market, with the education system... integrated into the mechanisms of such a market" (p.116). When school presents students, almost daily, with a language that promotes economic globalization, increasing production and unlimited expansion, identifies technology with unfettered 'progress', work with money and excellence with competition and 'winning at any cost', it is implicated in the manufacture and maintenance of what Bowers calls the myths of modernity: "that the plenitude of consumer goods and technological innovation is limited only be people's ability to spend, that the individual is the basic social unit... and that science and technology are continually expanding humankind's ability to predict and control their own destiny" (Bowers, 1996, p. 5, emphasis added). At risk here are the freedoms of individuals, the spiritual well-being of particular societies, and the very future of the planet. In Edmund O'Sullivan's (1999, p.27) words:

Our present educational institutions which are in line with and feeding into industrialism, nationalism, competitive transnationalism, individualism, and patriarchy must be fundamentally put into question. All of these elements together coalesce into a world view that exacerbates the crisis we are now facing.

Much of the world's poverty, injustice, terrorism and war can not be eradicated, nor can the litany of environmental crises (ozone depletion; global warming; land, air and water pollution; deforestation; desertification; and so on) be solved, without a major shift in the values that underpin western industrialized society. Interestingly, the key to ameliorating the current situation may lie in increased levels of scientific literacy among the world's citizens. As the authors of Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy (AAAS, 1993) suggest, "People who are literate in science... are able to use the habits of mind and knowledge of science, mathematics, and technology they have acquired to think about and make sense of many of the ideas, claims, and events that they encounter in everyday life" (p. 322, emphasis added). More recently, the OECD's programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) proposed that a scientifically literate person is "able to combine science knowledge with the ability to draw evidence-based conclusions in order to understand and help make decisions about the natural world and the changes made to it through human activity" (OECD/PISA, 1998, p.5). There are strong echoes here of Arons' (1983) emphasis on the ability to "discriminate, on the one hand, between acceptance of asserted and unverified end results, models, or conclusions, and on the other, understand their basis and origin; that is, to recognize when questions such as "How do we know?" "Why do we believe it?" "What is the evidence for it?" have been addressed, answered, and understood, and when something is being taken on faith" (p.93). Similar capabilities have sometimes been included in the notion of intellectual independence (Munby 1980; Aikenhead 1990; Norris 1997). Without such capabilities, citizens are "easy prey to dogmatists, flimflam artists, and purveyors of simple solutions to complex problems" (AAAS 1989, p.13) - including, one might add, some otherwise respectable scientists, politicians and commentators, who intimidate through their facility in a mode of discourse unfamiliar to many citizens.

The authors of Science For All Americans (AAAS 1989, p.12) also direct attention towards scientific literacy for a more socially compassionate and environmentally responsible democracy when they state that science can provide knowledge "to develop effective solutions to its global and local problems" and can foster "the kind of intelligent respect for nature that should inform decisions on the uses of technology" and without which, they say, "we are in danger of recklessly destroying our life-support system". Regrettably, they don't go on to suggest that scientific literacy also includes the capacity and willingness to act in environmentally responsible and socially just ways. This component is also absent from the definition proposed by the Council of Ministers of Education (1997, p.4) to guide curriculum construction throughout Canada: "scientific literacy is an evolving combination of the science-related attitudes, skills, and knowledge students need to develop inquiry, problem-solving, and decision-making abilities, to become lifelong learners, and to maintain a sense of wonder about the world around them".

Because, they say, "it conveys more clearly a flavour of science education for action as well as for personal enlightenment and satisfaction", the Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum (SCCC, 1996, p.15) has adopted the term scientific capability instead of scientific literacy. Scientific capability is described in terms of five distinct, but clearly interrelated, aspects: scientific curiosity - an enquiring habit of mind; scientific competence - ability to investigate scientifically; scientific understanding - understanding of scientific ideas and the way science works; scientific creativity - ability to think and act creatively; and scientific sensitivity - critical awareness of the role of science in society, combined with a caring and responsible disposition. Hence, becoming scientifically capable involves considerably more than the acquisition of scientific skills, knowledge and understanding. It also involves the development of personal qualities and attitudes, the formulation of one's own views on a wide range of issues that have a scientific and/or technological dimension, and the establishment of an underlying value position. In the words of the SCCC (1996, p.15), "a person who is scientifically capable is not only knowledgeable and skilled but is also able to draw together and apply her/his resources of knowledge and skill, creatively and with sensitivity, in response to an issue, problem or phenomenon". It is interesting and extremely disappointing that a document purporting to be action-oriented, does not include preparation for sociopolitical action by students in its definition. If we are to tackle the crisis (crises) that O'Sullivan identifies, we need a much more overtly politicized form of science education, a central goal of which is to equip students with the capacity and commitment to take appropriate, responsible and effective action on matters of social, economic, environmental and moral-ethical concern.