Page 76 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

6 Local Matters, EcoJustice, and Community 53

provides to education (in contrast to schooling) generally. This example also shows
that it is not lack of resources that should impede high-quality science education, not
only in the life sciences but in the physical sciences as well.
My early teaching career was characterized by a more naïve approach to teaching
science, whereby I thought that through hands-on experiences students would get
directly into contact with the patterns in the world that science captures in its
conceptual knowledge and in its equations. I subsequently learned about cultural-
historical activity theory, which provided me with a framework for designing cur-
riculum with goals and intentions that really matter – to (rural) students, teachers,
and their community. I sketch the theory to show how one might design a rural
school curriculum to which students subscribe and with which they engage because
what comes to be done does affect their community, their lives, and the lives of their
families. I exemplify my work in rural schools with extensive examples of teaching
and learning science in different communities where I taught before summarizing
some of the main advantages that derive from rural education.

Teaching in Rural Communities

In 1980, during an economic downturn and as a recent immigrant to Canada, it was
very difficult to find a job as a physicist, a subject in which I had obtained a masters
degree. I had abandoned the idea of becoming a teacher after very negative school-
related experiences when I switched from attending fourth grade in my rural village
school to an academically oriented (grammar school-like) “Gymnasium” (in a
nearby small city), which I could do only by attending a boarding facility for students
from rural communities run by monks of the Franciscan order. I abandoned the idea
of becoming a teacher because I did not do well – in part because of an undiagnosed
hearing loss – and the city folks, teachers and peers alike, thought that I was just a
dumb kid from a farm in the backwoods. But now, searching for a job, I noticed the
opportunities available, even without an education background, for teaching in
remote and isolated communities in eastern and northern Quebec, 700 km from the
next city (Sept Isles). I applied and immediately was offered a job under the condition
that during the summer months I would attend university until I obtained the
equivalent of a bachelor’s of education.
At the moment I interviewed, I did not know where precisely I would be teach-
ing, but the school board in urban Montreal, where I interviewed, represented 15
village schools on the Lower North Shore of the St. Lawrence River stretched out
along the 400-mile coastline, most of which to this day is not connected to the road
system of the remainder of the province. These villages could be accessed only by
boat, by bush plane, or by snowmobile in the winter months. One of these was
St. Paul’s River (Fig. 1, left), where I arrived one late afternoon during the second
week of September. The people there worked as fishermen during the summer or
hoped to complete the necessary 10-week employment in the local fish plant so that
they would qualify for 40 weeks of unemployment insurance payments. Electricity,
running water, and indoor plumbing had been in existence for only a few years