Page 47 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

3 EcoJustice Education for Science Educators 23

Students learn about chemical and biological properties of soil, as well as how
toxins began to be a problem in our environment as science helped to introduce new
plastics and other chemically based substances into our economic and consumer
system. The students and teachers along with members of the community learn in
and from the history of Detroit and the local landscape in ways that help them to
critically assess the presence of violence, dangerous levels of pollution, and blight.
One related project involved 8th grade students working with community-members
in a cleanup of illegally dumped tires in the lots and fields in the neighborhood,
while learning community–mapping skills, the process of a tire’s creation, use, and
“disposal,” and a process for recycling them. Science is learned both as a means to
understand why the brownfields exist, and what can be done to eradicate the pollu-
tion. In order for the students, teachers, and members of the community to tackle
this difficult task responsibly, they are learning about a very specific situational
context. And, they are learning about the value of working together with other
members in their community. Science meets democratic practice!
In another setting where soil was the focus, high-school students in a former
agricultural area of now-suburban New Hampshire investigated the biology, chem-
istry, and physics involved in the process of composting while cultivating organic
gardens and studying the history and politics of food security. The science teacher
for this class had groups of students dig samples from a compost pile begun earlier
in the year (using kitchen scraps from the school’s cooking class). Using a combi-
nation of secondary research and direct observation and testing, students developed
presentations on the chemical analysis, temperature dynamics, and micro- and
macro-organisms involved in “ideal” composting, in comparison to the compost
they had started. The situational nature of this activity is reflected in several ways.
First, students study composting in contrast to predominant forms of agricultural
soil augmentation – the use of chemical fertilizers that arose after World War II.
Using the ecojustice analysis of language and culture, they confront the ways these
approaches were promoted as “miracles of modernity,” advancements in technol-
ogy necessary to maintain farmers’ abilities to meet the world’s increasing food
production needs. Today these promotions frequently utilize the image of scientists
and science, and come from companies that naturally have a significant profit
motive involved. They capitalize on the cultural assumption of “progress” empha-
sizing the “high-status” character of science in our culture, and the accompanying
belief that practices like composting are inefficient and backward. Many accept this
idea without understanding the actual processes involved in how fertilizer works.
This course emphasized the local in the sense by helping students learn about
the practices of their own community in the not-too-distant past. Two generations
ago, many of the houses in which students live were located on former agricultural
lands that employed composting from the community’s founding (in its European
incarnation, anyway) in the mid-1700s. What does this say about the long-term
sustainability of their community? This composting activity is thus supportive of
life in several ways: students learn quickly from hands-on experience that compared
to petroleum-based fertilizers, compost is more soil-sustaining, and it reduces
waste. Further, studied in the wider context of global economics, they come to