Before the Pandemic: Past Attempts to Redress Health Disparities Via Science Education and Their Pathologizing Effects, STS Lunch Seminar with Katie Kirchgasler, Ph.D., Assistant Professor

Curriculum and Instruction Thursday, February 11th, 12:30-1:30, via Zoom

Since the 1980s, a key component of the U.S. federal agenda to address health disparities has been to design a different form of science education for target student populations. These reforms cite the correlation of disparities in health, science achievement, and scientific careers. One effect has been to triangulate a figure of the ‘underrepresented minority’ (URM) as a distinct pedagogical kind, presumed to require a different form of science education. Another effect has been to channel resources for redressing systemic inequities into a humanitarian model of intervention. That humanitarian model, I argue, pathologizes the cognition, lifestyle choices, and career aspirations of the ‘URM.’ This pathologizing move comes into relief with hindsight. In the talk, I examine how science/health pedagogies designated for ‘URM’ students in recent decades compare with those designed for students in segregated and colonial schools a century prior. I outline key shifts in the biopolitical formation of science classrooms as sites of humanitarian intervention—underscoring persistent racializing and depoliticizing effects. The current pandemic has only intensified calls for interdisciplinary, cross-sector reforms to address educational and health equity in tandem. This talk aims to foster dialogue about the ethico-political stakes of these reforms by resituating them in historical perspective.