Stopping Ourselves from Mattering Less

Oh boy, was I wrong. “Who needs these humanities requirements?” I asked as a college student. I was going to be a scientist and wanted to place my attention on (what I thought was) my ultimate goal. 

Sure, I learned to appreciate the genius of Shakespeare and enjoyed the scrum in my political science classes. But I loaded up on the hard not the social sciences. I bought the promise that technology had the answers to everything. One couldn’t be a whole person without a rock solid background in math, chemistry, physics, biology.

Whole person, huh? I said I was wrong, right? I’m not sure I can say it enough. I’ve come to hate mutual exclusivity and false equivalencies and yet, there I was. It took me years to figure out (with no small contribution from my wife) that interesting people, valuable people, are a package. We should have an appreciation – a facility, even – with a multitude of subjects spanning STEM subjects to the liberal arts.

We need to know enough about both the humanities and science to be capable citizens. With the politicization of so many topics – vaccines, evolution, climate change, stem cells – a more roundly educated public is essential. 

We need to expect and demand more of our leaders, too. I wonder how many of them read books like David McCullough’s 1776 or John Adams that chronicled how the founding fathers built a nation on progressive values; Peter Watson’s Ideas with two million years worth of language, thought, and invention; Constantine’s Sword by James Carroll on the evolution of faith and systematized prejudice; Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time to make your head ache when contemplating the enormity of our universe, or Abe by David Reynolds to show us how personal evolution and compromise gave rise to one of our greatest presidents.

Social media and cable news echo chambers have made it all too easy to receive what the algorithms are trained to feed us. We suffer from inertia, from a lack of curiosity, from what used to be the common practice of debating the issues (and not the facts). If the facts don’t fit the person’s worldview or “frame,” as the cognitive linguist George Lakoff termed it, the facts bounce off like bullets shot at Superman’s chest. Your opponent deflects all the data, swears on what they believe to be true, while you get blue in the face.

But now comes the latest assault on holistic education. The New York Times recently reported that West Virginia’s “flagship school will no longer teach world languages or creative writing — a sign, its president says, of the future at many public universities.” What the WVU administration is calling a “transformation,” others are calling a “blood bath.” It’s frightening to think this could be the beginning of a very dangerous spiral.

The questions of how to educate, what to teach, and with what money are not new. But this is different. We’re looking at institutional changes that could take years, generations to repair. If we’re not careful, if we don’t invest in expansive, accessible education, we will be less able to govern, less capable of informed, civil discourse, and less capable of maintaining our competitiveness on the world stage. The hollowing out of education, and the under-budgeting and the reversal of opportunity are as grave a threat as any facing our country.

Author of Camelot, Inc.: Leadership and Management Insights from King Arthur and the Round Table.

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Science Denial Part 2: A Threat to Children, Education and Competitiveness

The New York Times published a special Education Issue last week, “Learning What Works” in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education. The articles, collectively, set out an array of recommendations from top experts. They include:

• Increase attention to ideation and creativity
• Make teaching more immersive
• Increase teacher training and teacher pay
• Develop and distribute better instructional materials
• Encourage mentoring by outside experts or college/graduate students
• Provide the history and the context for science
• Dedicate time to applying ideas and practical invention
• Raise curriculum and testing standards

These are all good and important. So, let's go! There are many priorities out there but STEM education must be in the highest classification. We know from the scores obtained by the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment that 15-year-old students in the U.S. perform about average in reading. Average isn’t great but, when it comes to the math and science scores, it’s practically outstanding. Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 17th in science and 25th in math. (The 2012 results will be released at the end of this year.)

But there are barriers to success even within the science teaching community. Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, said that roughly 20 percent to 25 percent of the nation’s biology teachers don’t believe in evolution and subscribe to creationist views. Teaching evolution and/or climate change in schools has been hotly debated by legislatures and school boards in states including Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas. These boards should embrace and promote, not disparage and reject, the facts.

Students receive at least some science as part of a required curriculum. But what happens when they arrive at home? Are the lessons in science class reinforced or refuted? In a 2012 poll by Gallup only 15% of U.S. citizens believe humans evolved without any intervention from God. Thirty-two percent said God guided the evolutionary process and 46% said God created humans in their present form. (Seven percent had no opinion.)

And what do the students hear from those in power? Rather than lead the country through and away from false and flawed ideas, a number of our elected leaders are cheerfully, bombastically, pulling the country backward. In Congress, the House Science Committee hardly holds to its title. Rep. Paul Broun (GA) fumed, “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell.” Former Science Committee member Todd Akin (MO) famously opposed abortion for rape victims, in part, because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Rep. Dana Rohrabacker (CA) said recently, “Global warming is a total fraud” and dismissed global warming as a plot to institute a “global government.” His suggestion that “dinosaur flatulence” could explain historic climate change patterns was also notable. Rep. James Sensebrenner (WI) similarly amped up the conspiracy theorists when he said climate change theory was a “massive international scientific fraud.” Rep. Ralph Hall (TX) also charged that climate change is the product of a global conspiracy of scientists and told the National Journal in 2011 that he didn’t believe in a human influence on global warming because “I don’t think we can control what God controls.”

This competition between God and science is a false construct and distracts us from the issues. In his book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (2006), Dr. Francis Collins, director the National Institutes of Health, wrote, “the principles of faith are, in fact, complementary with the principles of science.” He went on, “there is no conflict in being a rigorous scientist and a person who believes in a God who takes personal interest in each one of us. Science’s domain is to explore nature. God’s domain is in the spiritual world, a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science.” Not believing in a “personal God,” Albert Einstein, nonetheless said, "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

The task of increasing our STEM preparedness goes well beyond the confines of schools. It’s immensely complex, opposing interests are deeply entrenched, and will take much longer and cost much more than most people realize. It’s not a problem that can be addressed by a five or ten year plan. It will take a generational blueprint that needs to be comprehensive, cohesive and well capitalized in order to see a return on the investment.

Between blog posts, I invite you to follow me on Twitter @pauloestreicher.

ExxonMobil Lifts the Veil on its CSR

This article first appeared in odwyerpr.com.

I caught notice of ExxonMobil’s “Let’s Solve This” TV ad campaign a few months ago. Its message is to “invest in teachers and inspire our students.” Indeed, ExxonMobil has been a supporter of science education for many years. After all, they need to stay competitive and find the best engineers, chemists and geologists.

The ads are terrific… and terrifying. In each iteration of the ad we’re told that, in a recent world ranking, the students in the United States scored 17^th in science and 25^th in math. It’s shameful.

But remember, we didn’t get nudged off the pinnacle; we can’t blame the countries that have overtaken us. This is a self-inflicted wound. We slid toward the bottom of the heap with creeping anti-intellectualism and cuts to education.

My admiration for ExxonMobil’s effort was spoiled, however, after reading an AP report on a speech delivered by the oil company’s CEO, Rex Tillerson, to the Council on Foreign Relations. Though Mr. Tillerson broke with some industry colleagues and recognized that burning fossil fuels is warming our planet, he said, “we’ll adapt. It’s an engineering problem and there will be an engineering solution.”

He downplayed risks to the environment and agriculture, the threat of rising sea levels and the potential for contamination from drilling (by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking) in oil shale formations. Quoting the AP report, he blamed “a public that is "illiterate" in science and math, a "lazy" press, and advocacy groups that "manufacture fear" for energy misconceptions.”

So, what is the oil industry’s biggest challenge? It’s not finding new sources of oil. It’s not a threat from wind or solar energy. Mr. Tillerson said it’s "taking an illiterate public and try to help them understand why we can manage these risks."

There you go; there’s the essence of the ExxonMobil CSR (corporate social responsibility) campaign. The Company’s logic is that a more scientifically literate public won’t believe climate scientists or environmental advocacy groups. They’ll question and challenge their data and they’ll come to accept the information provided by ExxonMobil.

It’s neither a surprise nor wrong that a corporation should seek some sort of gain from its CSR investment. I’ve been involved in plenty of socially responsible programming that reaped corporate benefits and am proud of the work. But the campaign in question raises cynicism to a new level.

One of the beneficiaries of ExxonMobil’s outreach is The National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI). They state that, “American students are falling behind in the essential subjects of math and science, putting our position in the global economy at risk. The mission of the National Math and Science Initiative is to help provide the ideas, inspiration, and resources to close the gap.”

We all recognize that our science and math rankings are competitiveness issues. But it goes beyond this – it’s also about our democracy. Jon D. Miller, director, Center for Biomedical Communications, Northwestern University Medical School told The New York Times in 2005 that “People’s inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process.” With the politicization of so many topics – stem cells, gene therapy, vaccines, evolution, climate change – a better educated public is essential.

I hope that ExxonMobil continues to fund science literacy and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education programs, even though I’ve now alerted them that their ultimate goal is wishful thinking. It's a classic example of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. And, I hope the public doesn't view all CSR programs as nefarious plots. There’s too much good being done to have CSR get redefined as Cynical Social Responsibility.

Between blog posts, I invite you to follow me on Twitter @pauloestreicher.