Undefining Science

I love science. My mind wakes up in a lab. My hands know what to do when I grab a scalpel, carry a beaker of acid, or pipet colonies of yeast. Good luck getting me to talk about much else, because I promise you, I can find a way to slip science into any conversation.

Science is a part of me. I want it open for everyone. The problem is science articles aren't friendly to those who aren't scientifically literate, sometimes they aren't friendly to those who are. Scientific literacy becomes necessary to access data, but it isn't a common skill. Still, knowing the divide between the general public and science, I was caught off guard by the view some people have of the sciences.

I was sitting in the campus dining hall when it happened. Across from me a classmate sat partially hunched with hands folded and a voice dulled against the clamor of a busy campus.

“Well, science is evil.”

I shot up in my seat, vertebrae clicking into place, painfully straight.

“What? How is science evil?” I tried to hold back a response before I fully understood.

“Well, science is evil.” They repeated with a shrug. “It isn’t really accessible, especially for people from lower classes.”

I was furious. I’m not wealthy. I pay for the expense of my education because, working two jobs, my mom can’t afford to help. That moment felt like either my classmate assumed that I was upper middle class or was trying to distance me from the science central to who I was. It hit hard, part of me was being dismissed by a stranger.

In that moment I couldn’t register my peer`s hurt. I forgot that science could be inaccessible, even hostile.

The conversation left me dismal. Articles could be written in ways that anyone could comprehend, but that would do nothing about the lack of resources for students in poor and predominantly black schools, or against societal biases against women, lower socio-economic classes, and people of color, let alone all the places those biases meet. My place in science became more questionable. Was my highschool science education on par with that of my peers? Could my background lead colleagues to dismiss me?

People from lower classes, people of color, particularly women, were they set to be isolated from STEM fields? Science, I worried, was incapable of being shared, just a tool for manipulation by those with access against those without. They were arguing the worst outcome while I was arguing from points of naivety. Neither of us were right, and no conclusion was ever reached beyond an agreement to disagree.

While I have grown to see that the scientific world has more social context than I had previously appreciated, I still refuse to believe that science is evil. Working at CGEST has helped me to see science is a tool. The fields in science are full of biases, but science itself isn’t designed for specific people, so I am responding again to my peer with what I learned.

“Dear peer who once called science evil,

I think I now understand where you are coming from. Science can be a hostile field. The defining of science starts young, becoming a “boy thing” as early as elementary school. Science clubs have fewer and fewer girls. By the time you get to high school, science courses are incredibly unbalanced. A lack of opportunities, continuous loss of teachers, inadequate supplies all disadvantage kids from low income backgrounds in their education. College is difficult to access without money and transferring from community college has its own stigmas. Racial stereotypes stack up against people of color and sometimes pair with gender bias, so that girls and women of color face hostile school and work environments in college and beyond.

This summer I had an internship at the Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology at Arizona State University. One of the programs the center runs is CompuGirls, a technology program for middle school aged girls of color. The program teaches the girls about coding and computer science in a culturally responsive way, the program is based on what the girls know, have experienced, and want to do. The science becomes theirs. The program has a social justice aspect to it. The girls get to take the science they've already molded into their own and use it for some message they deem important. CompuPOWER is another program the center runs in rural, low income high schools. The kids get access to technology they may not normally have and learn how to use it. The kids get to utilize what they learn to work to make a change in their community.

The programs don't rattle off facts and set experiments in order to simply prepare kids for science classes. The programs offer tools. The kids learn to use it to empower themselves and try to bring change they care about.

I know you look at science and see evil, but I ask you to take a moment to reconsider. Science is a tool, whose exclusivity is only born in the way it is taught and expressed in our society. CompuGirls and CompuPOWER challenge science as society sees it. The thing you see as evil is also a weapon for those whom have been historically marginalized by it.

I am asking a lot, but for a moment, take science out of the box you've set it in and see what it can actually do. Maybe it’ll surprise you.

Sincerely,

Sierra Fales

Bennington College Student Intern