Chapter 1: The Politics of Science and the Science Education Standards
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Published:2013
2013. "The Politics of Science and the Science Education Standards", Courageous Pedagogy: Enacting Critical Science Education, Andrew Gilbert
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Science holds a special place in the public. There exists a nearly universal reputation for science to create economic and militaristic advantages for nation states (Rudolph, 2002). The commonsense notion that a scientifically literate populous can increase the competitive advantage of the nation state is evident from President Obama’s State of the Union speech in January 2010.
President Obama has clearly tried to rally patriotic support for harnessing scientific understanding as means to accumulate capital and resources to compete with rival nations. In so doing, he commodified future generations of school children not as having the potential to solve our most pressing human and ecological crises that we face, but rather merely as a means to outcompete other rising capitalist economies. Robin Usher (2010) provided more insight here in regards to the value of this commodification:
Knowledge (what is learned) has itself become a sign, a commodity, a product in its own right, that can be purchased and consumed for it’s economic and cultural value—capital which can confer competitive advantage and/or status or at least alleviate the fear of falling behind, either economically or culturally (p. 43).
