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9 What’s Wrong with Genetic Engineering? Ethics, Socioscientific Issues, and Education 135

communicate from, with, and about their raw emotions on important moral issues
that arise in their educational experience.
Mueller and Zeidler explain how socioscientific reasoning involves students
exercising self-reflection and self-questioning of their most “fundamental beliefs
and values.” It is highly probable that some students, and educators too, believe that
humans should not be in the (big) business of genetically modifying species.
Furthermore, some may not be able to articulate or defend the nuances of their
convictions or positions with a consistent line of reasoning. This does not mean
students’ primary feelings and thoughts on important ethical matters are unimport-
ant or unintelligible. In fact, the very opposite is true – these surface intuitions
provide the foundation and opportunity for the development of further reflective
and argumentative skills. As the authors write, “Under the SSI framework, ‘reason-
ing’ is not meant to subjugate emotion, intuition, or other forms of human knowl-
edge and experiences. Reasoning is what we do when we invoke a spectrum of
thought.” Without marginalizing or dismissing students’ “gut” reactions – their
intuitive and emotive sources of knowledge – as irrational, irrelevant, or somehow
not educable, schools and educators should flesh out why students might feel this
or that way about biotechnology, which is, to some extent, a pre-consequential
conversation.
A central purpose of this paradigmatic fusion is to discern the strengths and
weaknesses of each theory. For example, focusing solely on the consequences of
behavior, albeit important, should not consume all our energy – this will thwart the
pedagogical enterprise of ecojustice ethics through socioscientific issues. Educators
and schools are likely to perpetuate the despair often associated with the “ecologi-
cal crisis” by only focusing on the consequences of students’ actions (Mueller
2009). Educationally speaking, it is disparaging to inculcate in children that “your
actions will either rescue or annihilate future generations of your species and the
Earth.” Finger-pointing breeds aversion and will most likely stifle any desire to act
environmentally responsible. Educating for ecological intelligence is probably best
approached with a close look at the underlying presuppositions and motivations of
human conduct, in addition to the careful contemplation of the ramifications of
individual action and institutional policy.
Conversely, a weakness of the nonconsequential wrongness position, as in the
case of GMOs, is that it can eliminate potential benefits before we even have a
good grasp about what the benefits are. Rollin points out how the ubiquitous,
almost unquestioned belief in the “inherent wrongness of tampering with the
human genome” has hindered forms of genetic research that could “remove,
repair, or replace the defective gene at the embryonic level” for sufferers of, for
example, cystic fibrosis (p. 65). Assuming we possess the knowledge and technol-
ogy to reduce the suffering of human persons by eradicating certain diseases
before they even take hold, are we not morally obligated to do so? In sum, the
socioscientific movement should embrace these two seemingly conflicting para-
digms to enrich human moral consciousness and better help students “make value
judgments and confront disparities for affected peoples, plants, animals and the
environment.”