Page 383 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

358 C.D. Stonebanks

challenged my knowledge of my own cultural history and the contributions of
Islamic civilizations and Iran (both pre and current Islamic eras) to many fields,
including science. Walking up and down the fixed aisles of the class he once asked,
“who can tell me where our current, modern hospitals came from, where did they
originate?” A few answers suggesting European origin and especially ancient
Greece were forwarded. Smiling, he moved among the seated students, “no,” he
said and paused for a moment.
“Christopher?”
Surprised that he asked me, I responded: “I don’t know.”
“You should!” he retorted, “it’s your history, your heritage!”
Even as the great Muslim physicians live and die, more lasting memorials to their medical
wisdom will rise across the cityscapes. These new structures will be virtually unknown
anywhere else in the world and will not be replicated in any significant way for centuries
to come. (…) they will be driven by egalitarian message of the Prophet, to care for the poor,
the sick, and the less fortunate. These buildings will be called hospitals and pharmacies.
(…) In the Muslim East, hospitals will be known as bimaristan, literally “sick places”, later
shortened to “maristan”. And rather where people go to die, they will be places where
people go to be treated and to recover from a variety of ailments and injuries, including
mental illness. (Morgan 2007, P. 211)
He was right, I should have known. But his accusation was not (entirely) one of
my own shortcomings. Rather, the driving force of much of this professor’s class
was that this knowledge was purposefully or not, kept from us. By the time I
entered the university, the opportunity to re-enter science was lost. As I made my
way from undergraduate studies to a professor of education, science education and
its relationship with hegemony, critical thinking, and Indigenous ways of knowing,
became increasingly evident. It became apparent through my teaching that I should
expose this hegemony as much as possible. Surprisingly, or at least unexpected to
me, the most effective lesson I teach on stimulating thought and dialogue in the area
of critical thinking and multiple ways of knowing is through science education.
Subject areas such as science education become particularly important because they
are so often considered value neutral and lead students to believe that science falls
outside of the considerations of critical pedagogy. Perhaps this disregard creates an
illusion that neutrality achieved in science education can lead the way for other aca-
demic areas to disguise themselves of the burden of cultural considerations. For
example, a common occurrence in my multiculturalism undergraduate classes comes
in the form of protests from (wonderful) science education preservice teachers who say
that “diversity and cultural” considerations have little or nothing to do with their
discipline. My concern is not simply with schools in Canada or the United States, but
in recognizing the prevailing global influences of eurowestern education systems and
their impacts on indigenous knowledge and education. With the ongoing legacy of
imperialism and colonialism and the imprint of eurowestern modes of education on
indigenous communities around the world (Stonebanks 2008a, 2008b), concerns for
engaging in these discussions take on an interconnected, global meaning as we attempt
to fulfill critical pedagogy’s call to reveal the causes of human suffering and become
conscious of the idea that this call cannot be addressed in isolation from others.