Science and Technology Education

Students participating in the FIRST (Female Involvement in Real Science and Technology) program work with their teacher on a gardening project at Fruitvale Elementary School in Oakland, California.
Image courtesy of the U.S. National Science Foundation

Harold Foecke, when decades ago he took over the science education program for UNESCO, helped broaden the focus of that program to include technology education. I worry about economic development, and teaching technology rather than just science strikes me as very important. Foecke’s was in my opinion a real contribution.

In poor countries, people often don’t go to school very long. It seems to me that the way you teach science and technology ought to depend very heavily on how long you will have students in school. It also ought to depend on what those kids will do when they leave school, and the cultures from which they come.

If you only have girls in school for two or three years, and those girls will be the givers of child care and doing the family meals, it may be very important to teach them something in those early years about hygiene and nutrition.

If you only have boys in school for a couple of years, and those boys are going to be doing heavy work, it may be important to teach them something about simple mechanics during those early years – how pulleys and levers work, for example.

In Africa, I am told, those same girls who only go to school a couple of years often do the farming when they grow up, while in other countries the farming is done by males. It seems to me that poor kids in rural areas -- who will only go to school for a couple of years, and will spend many years taking care of crops -- should be given an opportunity to learn some basics about how plants grow, what they get from the soil, and how to protect crops from pests and diseases.

Kids going to school in urban areas, even if they are only likely to have a few years of schooling, may benefit from some of the same lessons as their rural peers, but also from some different lessons. Thus those who are or will be care givers may benefit from hygiene and nutrition lessons, but few urban kids will be expected to be farmers. Those city kids who will work on the factory floor may benefit from information on how machines work.

If the schools can expect to keep children thru secondary education, those schools can take a lot longer to provide opportunities to learn about science and technology. I think that schools serving higher income families even in very poor countries have this chance, so maybe science and technology curricula even in the lower grades should vary according to the economic status of the population served by the school.

I suspect that this common sense approach is very often ignored due to cultural blinders we all too often wear. Of course it is important to train doctors and engineers, and the training for these professions will be long and will require a broad and thorough foundation in science and the relevant techniques. But in our focus on training a knowledge-elite professionally we should not forget to teach what we can to kids who will only go to school for a couple of years; there is a lot of basic science and technology that could serve them in the future.

Similarly, the ideas of science and technology training that come from Japanese, North American or European high schools and colleges may not be too relevant to the needs of poor primary school kids in India or Africa.

The Affect Side of S&T Education

Science and technology education is not just about imparting knowledge and skills, it is also about instilling attitudes. In the United States we are quite concerned that kids in secondary schools learn to like science and math in order that a reasonable portion of secondary school graduates will choose to go on into scientific and technological professions. So too, in developing countries, it is important that sufficient numbers of those kids who can go on into these professions are motivated to do so.

A really important attitude in life relates to where one goes for information. Do you get health information from relatives and neighbors, from traditional practitioners such as midwives and herbalists, or from doctors and nurses? Do you get farming information from neighbors, from religious figures, from astrologers, or from agricultural extension workers. In countries where modern institutions are available sources of high quality technological information, people still may choose to believe “old wives tales” because they seek information from “old wives”. Schools are great places to inculcate the attitude that you get the best health information from the local health center, the best agricultural information from the ag extension worker, or the best educational services from the schools.

Of course, for it to be reasonable attitudes to inculcate in the students, the modern knowledge systems should work better than the traditional ones –not always the case in poor communities.

I wonder how effective UNESCO, the World Bank, and other donor organizations are encouraging the improvement of science and technology education in poor countries?