9 - To Put the Last First

Abstract

This chapter highlights a conference organized by the Committee on the Teaching of Science of the International Council of Scientific Unions. The title of the conference was Science and Technology Education and Future Human Needs. Future Human Needs and Science and Technology Education. This chapter presents an argument in which it was argued that the sequence and direction of the title should be reversed, and that there should be initiation not with science and technology education but with future human needs. The way one thinks about future human needs is largely determined by the biased system of knowledge in which one is trapped. Power, knowledge, and the ability to generate new knowledge are concentrated in urban and industrial centers, and not only in the richer countries of the North. These centers put first the concerns of the rich and powerful, such as sophisticated weapons, rockets, chips, cars, chemicals, disease of the affluent and ageing, and the mechanized agriculture of temperate climates. They set standards and fashions, and draw towards them professionals from all over the world. The actions and priorities of these professionals then define future human needs as those of the urban, industrial, and educated elite. Textbooks, training, and the media then disseminate their values and concerns to other less central, less powerful, environments.