Thirty Years of STS: Reminiscences of a Survivor!
by Irma S. Jarcho
(Editor's Note: The following is Irma Jarcho's banquet address to the Fourteenth National STS Meeting in Baltimore, MD, 6 March 1999.)
I started teaching science at The New Lincoln School in New York City after a career as a research bacteriologist, a second as a research analyst in the medical intelligence division of the Army, and a third as wife and mother. Our school had a program that I have not seen duplicated elsewhere, yet I have strongly urged other schools to emulate it. As is to be expected in an upper middle class school in New York City, a number of our parents were scientists doing research in a wide variety of hospitals, laboratories, and universities -- or administering the same. So years before I joined the staff of New Lincoln, these parents had been invited to join a science advisory board which offered advice and ideas to the science department. I believe it met bimonthly.
At one such meeting, in early 1968, the members noted that science and technology were having increased impact on daily life and that perhaps New Lincoln should institute a high school course, at the senior level, on the impact of science on society. I was the only one in the department who took up the challenge. I worked on it over the summer and in the fall of 1968 I offered the course, open to juniors and seniors who had completed their science requirements, and I called it "Science and Society." The course was immediately popular and has been taught almost continuously in the intervening years, with an enrollment fluctuating between six and thirty students. It is, I believe, probably the oldest high school STS course in the United States. College STS courses, of course, had long been a dime a dozen.
One of the interesting facets of this account is how the topics in this STS course have changed over the years. Before Roe v. Wade I would never have discussed abortion, although population problems were important even then. Many of the early topics have either disappeared from the curriculum or been deemphasized. In the first years I included air pollution, but not the ozone layer, acid rain, or global warming. Water pollution was taught, but not runoff from monster farms. We did not cover depletion of fisheries. Who would have predicted that the most productive fishing grounds in North America, the Georges Bank, would crash and be declared off limits to Canadian fishermen? There was waste disposal, yes, but not the humongous problems now facing us in relation to radioactive wastes accumulated during the Cold War. Believe it or not, there were no problems of energy to be discussed. Oil was cheap, readily available, and would last forever. It wasn't until the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo that energy was included in the course.
That was thirty years ago, or more. Now, STS is to be reckoned with in many schools as an integral part of the curriculum. We have a national STS society -- ours -- devoted to these concerns. I am immensely proud to have been a part of the STS movement for so many years, and I can well remember how I became involved in it on a national scale. Around 1972 or so I read an article by Bob Yager (and it is never very difficult to find an article by Bob Yager!) describing what he called an STS course -- science, technology, and society. Like the character in Moli¸re -- who all of a sudden found out he had been speaking in prose and never knew it -- I had, unbeknownst, been teaching an STS course!
I wrote to Bob, telling him about my course, and he immediately responded. I would like to interject my profound admiration and gratitude to Bob for his advice, encouragement, and guidance. It has been unfailing, and I am deeply grateful for his mentoring. Bob got me involved in proselytizing the STS gospel. There were papers presented at STS sessions in practically every science convention from then on, appointments to task forces and committees, and, in short, every STS activity in which I could participate.
In 1982 with my two colleagues and friends, John Roeder and Nancy Van Vranken, we set up the Teachers Clearinghouse for Science and Society Education and began publishing its Newsletter, which continues to this day, both in hard copy and on the web http://www.freeinfo.org/tch. Our efforts to publicize STS now redoubled, because we were spreading the word, not just about STS in general but specifically about our Clearinghouse. There was hardly a meeting of the NSTA (National Science Teachers Association), the NABT (National Association of Biology Teachers), or the ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) at which we were not represented.
As a result of the this onslaught of publicity, I was asked to join the National Advisory Committee for Science through Science, Technology, and Society (S-STS), organized by another guardian genius of STS affairs, Rustum Roy. We met in Washington at the headquarters of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science). It was a rather large committee, with many administrators and educators from colleges and universities -- and only five high school teachers. These five soon found out that in union there is strength and that the best way to assure that our voice would be heard at meetings was to get together and have dinner the night before and plan our nefarious machinations. They became fast friends. Dick Brinckerhoff, who organized the Exeter Conferences, is unfortunately no longer with us, but the others -- Jane Abbott, Jon Harkness, Elizabeth Horsch, and I -- still think of each other with affection and admiration.
This committee organized and carried out -- or, to be more accurate, the Penn State Staff, under Rusty's direction, organized -- the first of what were called the Technological Literacy Conferences (TLC), and what a success they achieved! At the first one I particularly remember Colorado Governor Lamm's speech, in which I heard for the first time the story of the admiral in his flagship ordering the lighthouse to get out of his way! The TLC became the NASTS annual conferences, and we are now attending the fourteenth of these since we kept the consecutive numeration.
Much to my regret, the attendance at these conferences had been declining, and it is difficult, but perhaps not impossible, to figure out why. I may be wrong, but I think that, because of the umbrella nature of the organization, it has been difficult to entice funding for such a protean undertaking. The religious institutions will give money for religious conferences; science institutions will fund science meetings, and so on. Don't misunderstand me. I wish we could retain that mix, which I deem essential, yet also attract funding. What is the advantage of offering such a varied far if no one will partake of it! That huge umbrella has its disadvantages. To the religious people we are not religious enough. To the philosophers we are not adept enough to discuss philosophy in a commanding fashion, while the scientists look down their noses at us as not being a real science organization.
On another topic -- I do not want to start a fight, just an argument -- I do not think we have done enough to attract more K-12 teachers to the work of the organization. I still remember one TLC for which we obtained funding for an entire busload of teachers to attend from New York City.
Today, all over the country, STS is alive and well, courses can be found in innumerable colleges, universities, and high schools. State programs, including the flourishing work in Iowa under Bob Yager's guidance, are examples of what STS can be. Numerous journals are devoted to STS and newsletters on the topic abound. The Newsletter of our Clearinghouse is one of many in the field. The last time I counted there were 63 -- and that was many years ago. Now there must be over a hundred. As a final measure of approval, the National Science Education Standards included STS as a primary component of science curricula.
Yet I do not feel that we can rest on our laurels. Much of what is said about STS pays lip service to the concept but shows little understanding of its potential. The whole meaning of STS is sometimes distorted. The National Science Education Standards identify technology as "driven by the need to meet human needs and solve human problems. . . ." Technology does not always fit that definition. In today's world many technological advances are set in motion by the same impulses the Standards say science obeys, viz., "the desire to understand the natural world." No human need is served by the Hubble Space Telescope -- but what a window into the natural world it does provide!
I am Puerto Rican by birth, and Spanish is my native language, so early I acquired a collection of delightful Spanish proverbs. Indeed, my husband complains that he was brought up on Russian proverbs, then married Spanish ones! There is one, in particular, that came to my mind when I was preparing these remarks: "Nadie es profeta en su tierra." "No one is a prophet in his own land." And yet it is vouchsafed me to be a prophet in my own land! To see a field I started to participate in three decades ago attain a measure of acceptance that would have been inconceivable then. Let us continue our efforts to make Science, Technology, and Society an integral component of our schools' science curricula and redouble our efforts to make sure it contributes meaningfully to our understanding of our civilization.
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