Arrogance, Poverty, And Hierarchy Are Hidden Turnoffs In Science Education

By Arielle Emmett

Date: March 18, 1991

Professional Cassandras who foresee the end of the United States' scientific preeminence read doom in the stars, doom in the schools, and doom, especially, in the minds of young people. Reputable experts debate whether declining enrollments will lead to drastic shortages of Ph.D.'s in the 21st century, a prelude to America's scientific downfall. Some point to ominous, but by now shop-worn, roadsigns of national decline. These include anything from falling achievement test scores to the rise in numbers of foreign nationals taking scientific and engineering degrees. A more telling barometer of our anxiety is the murmurings--sometimes open, sometimes covert--that American students today are just not "prepared" the way they used to be. In many instances, "prepared" is a euphemism for "bright." In practically every college-level science class I've attended over the last two years (I returned to school to complete premedical studies, having graduated from the University of Michigan 17 years ago), professors lament openly that students don't take Latin. They don't read. They don't make inferences. They're lacking vital background. They're lazy.

The truth is that plenty of students are plenty bright today. But they are learning about the world in a different, darker way from what intellectual achievers of another generation might prefer.

They are street smart. They worry about money, material acquisition, family problems, drugs, sexuality, assimilating or keeping apart--culturally or linguistically--or simply getting through the problems of growing up. These concerns are particularly disrupting to the science educator--by definition a high intellectual achiever of another generation--who still must teach pretty much within the same environment and pedagogic structure of a generation ago.

The real crisis in science education is internal. It is a set of personal and uneasy relationships between student and professor and between professors themselves. The problem isn't the students--at least it doesn't start with them. It's the alleged role models, from fledgling science teachers to the academic elite. It's a sense of expecting students to want and go after the same things the last generation wanted; to expect some sort of consensus on what constitutes adequate reward for the difficult, exclusionary, and often bittersweet pursuit of a scientific career.

While it is true that educators are still teaching science in much the same way they were taught 20 or 30 or more years ago, students are no longer connecting to the methodology. They are also skeptical of their place in the science hierarchy of the future. In many instances students seem completely unwilling recipients of knowledge. Teachers use the same models for learning, the same testing techniques, the same intensive textbook study; they cling to the same notions of pattern, inference, and detail. And yet students appear lost, disoriented.

It is easy to explain the problem as multifactorial--a crisis in national educational preparedness, changes in culture and demographics, declining academic standards. Yet none of these explanations gets to the root of the problem.

Indeed, any smart student can see through it all. The system is arrogant. The system--academic science in particular--is pyramidal to the extreme and, worse, impoverished. Arrogance, poverty, and hierarchy are the real turnoffs in science education. The arrogance is both individual and collective. It is not simply, for example, the exclusion of large sectors of the population or the crass prejudice against individual groups--blacks, women, older students, and so forth. It is even more personal than that. I am talking first-hand about the arrogance of the professor who can make or break student careers based principally on whim, sexual appetite, or personal impression. I am talking about a system that gives lip service to "broadening the pool" rather than "skimming the cream" of available talent, but is actually becoming more and more exclusionary in its training requirements, expectations, and financial support.

Graduate schools accept students today with promises of nothing more than blood, sweat, tears, and years of eye-stinging labor. The system is so bereft of financial reward and so choked with talent that it expects the best and the brightest to claw up a ridiculously expanding ladder--say, to spend six years getting a doctorate, two or three in postdoc work, followed by various research associateships, and finally to land a first tenure-track job at $32,000 a year.

Why bother with any of this if it's easier to get a law degree or an MBA and sell junk bonds for $250,000 a year? Which would any self-respecting neophyte choose? I'm not trying to be cavalier about this, but the scientific community hasn't answered this simple question. Indeed, the elitism of the community, a result, perhaps, of the exceptional complexity of the work it does, has almost precluded serious discussion of this or any other issue pertaining to adequate financial incentives.

If anything, as financial rewards have gone down, arrogance has gone up. The community appears to be more and more entranced by its separate, abstruse self. It has its media stars (for example, Robert Gallo) and its land of the giants (the National Institutes of Health). It says that Americans are scientifically illiterate and that something must be done; yet scientists still rejoice in their own abstract languages, their tribal customs, their very separateness from the pack. The turf has become so forbidding, the pressure to produce new and good work so intense, that the community is tongue-tied, in a sense. It appears virtually incapable of communicating the importance of what it does to anyone outside itself. The impression is of a war zone--a closed border--to those who wish to venture forth.

Some standard replies to the issues raised here would run like this: Brilliant science minds will always gravitate toward teaching and research, and science will certainly reward the brightest not only by dint of money but also by the thrill of the chase. But what happens to the "merely bright" young people training to be our future scientists? It's my impression that the "merely bright" are most at risk of being lost.

If science really wants them (and I'm not sure this is true at all; science seems to want the cream only, or more properly, the crŠme de la crŠme), then something must be done to make science a more reasonable choice for those of us with a spark, a willingness to work hard, and an expectation that we are neither indentured servants nor serfs.

One personal story I am loath to recount is my experience last summer in an oncogene research laboratory where I was invited by the department head to apprentice as a lab tech and learn how big science is actually done. Within 10 minutes of starting my work, I stuck myself with a clean needle. Two days later, I was fired. It was explained to me that the pace and demand of the laboratory were just too great. It didn't matter that my trial period consisted of only two half-days. The department head was on deadline to score another grant. He explained to me that what he really was after was a technician to feed cell cultures--good cheap labor, in other words--and that he couldn't hold onto someone just because she wanted to learn.

Later, when I wrote a letter protesting the treatment to the director of the research laboratory, I received a reply from the department head who had hired me. He completely misrepresented the reason for my dismissal, which was due, he said, to my asking too many questions, bothering his staff, and generally getting in the way. He concluded his letter by pronouncing that I lacked the discipline and commitment needed to do science, a judgment he made on the basis of no more than three hours of contact. He further advised me to find another profession.

I realize that the arrogance and insensitivity of a single person does not spell doom for an entire profession. Certainly I have had my share of wonderfully supportive, generous science professors, especially in my recent experience as a "born again" undergraduate. I've known teachers who would go to the ends of the earth to help an intellectually curious student box his or her way out of a problem, find the right niche, or apply for the right kind of job. But I don't think the academic community knows what kind of damage one arrogant educator can do: how many people he or she can turn off; how much his or her hidden agenda can ultimately affect a student.

I know my experience isn't unique. I have now heard too many graduate students--especially women--and even professors say that they would have never pursued a science career given what they know now. I have listened to countless bright undergraduate students trying to find "niche" alternatives by taking lesser, technical degrees in science rather than trying for a doctorate. Indeed, my own files are filled with anecdotes and testimonials of scientists--again, mostly women--who refer to lives spent battling something in their careers other than crass prejudice. As far as I can tell, the fight is against the more subtle arrogance of professors; then the arrogance of the selection process; and, finally, the arrogance of peer review, tenure, and professional and personal back stabbing.

Scientists: It's got to stop. You have only yourselves to blame for turning young people off to science, and the "merely bright" are being turned off in record numbers. Even in the most positive undergraduate classroom experiences today, it is nearly impossible to find a professor who can wax ecstatic about the prospects of a scientific career.

Before scientists worry about redesigning curricula, attracting more students, or getting more money, they must look hard at the hierarchies they have built. The scientific community will not encourage young people to come forth unless they are given a clear, compelling reason for doing so. Part of that reason has to be money. But part of it should be because of the excitement of the work, the feeling of open borders--not step pyramids--of welcoming those with enthusiasm, intelligence, and heart, regardless of one's aspirations or current level of training.

In short, scientists need to ask themselves why they have become so arrogant. Without a process of painful self-examination, the future of American science education is surely lost.

Arielle Emmett is a premedical student and freelance writer based in Hewitt, N.J.