Abolition Science

Resource: Abolition Science Podcast - https://www.abolitionscience.org/

A few weeks ago, I started learning about Abolition Education, or the abolition of systems in education that support white supremacy and oppress BIPOC and replacement with systems of anti-oppression that attend to EVERYONE’S humanity. While I was super pumped to learn about this (you can check out some incredible online conversations about abolition education here) and felt like I understood the premise of abolition education, if you were to ask me about the tangible things I could do in my classroom that aligned with abolition education, I wouldn’t be able to give you an answer. The concept as a whole is more clear to me, but the actual implementation is still fuzzy. While I have been thinking a lot about Indigenous pedagogy and Indigenous science (and applying it to environmental education), I also found this podcast called Abolition Science!! It’s hosted by LaToya Strong, a high school science teacher in Brooklyn, and Atasi Das, an educator based in Harlem and doctoral candidate focusing on enacting critical numeracy across curriculum in schools.

After the first episode where they discuss what science abolition means, each episode involves them interviewing guests who are thinking critically about science/science education. I have listened to the first 4 episodes of their podcast, and while I still feel fuzzy about abolition science and a lot of what they talk about is over my head (for now), I do feel like I have a better sense of what abolition education means for science and math.

This is what I have learned so far about abolition science :

They defined abolition as the “deliberate and intentional removal of imprisonment, isolation, punitive institutionalization as the foremost way of addressing issues of harm and healing.”

Themes that they found in abolition science are:

• Enclosing Knowledge - By this, they mean that the science and math we practice in western cultures privilege some forms of knowledge, but not others - in other words, some knowledge is considered more valuable than others. In our culture, there’s basically a dichotomy of Western science (based on European rationality and in colonialism; positions scientists outside of what they study; assumed to be objective) and all other ways of knowing (eg, Indigenous science, Eastern science).

• Looking at the relationship between capital and labor in science and math - In science, there is a commodification of knowledge. For example, Westerns can go into another country and extract compounds/molecules out of plants to create something they can sell, but nothing they make from it goes back to the communities they stole it from as well as privatization in science, like creating patents to put your name on it. As for math, there are many ways that math can be taught/used (they listed a bunch that I didn’t really catch), but in schools we prioritize math that’s situated in capitalism.

• Thinking Differently - Abolition education/abolition science involves thinking about community building and infiltrating communities with happy and healthy ways of being. It requires thinking outside of what we know. For example in mathematics, we often tell students “think like this,” and abolition science/math shakes up who decides what numbers are associated with what and for what purpose. It also comes from a place of accepting that there is more than one way to explore the natural world, not holding steadfast to science that holds truth, and recognizing that science causes harm to people unless we change. Also science and math are positioned as pathways of learning that have policies around it that have tracks in education - those should be questioned and we should ask who is benefiting from those ways of knowing?

• Acknowledging that all things and processes have a history - In these episodes, it was brought up that Western science is based in imperialism (has a history in imperialism), there are many different number systems throughout the world and yet we privilege learning of the Hindu/Arabic base 10 number system in our education system, and that the right to public education was advocated for and came from Black reconstruction after the Civil War.

• Dismantling to build something else - Abolition science does not just mean abolishing oppressive systems, but building something new and better in it’s place. One way to do that is to craft science that is in solidarity in justice, and by doing that, it will benefit all of humanity.

In the 4th episode, LaToya and Atasi interviewed two members of the Free Radicals, an activist collective of scientists and mathematicians who work to create more socially just and accountable science. The group started out as a handful of friends who wanted to discuss the intersections of science and social justice, and over time it turned into a collective that focuses on community building, political education (especially around the imperialist history of western science and how to incorporate justice into science), and grassroots organizing. As to grassroots organizing, they talked about the political nature of data, where although in western science data and data collection is attempted and through to be objective, in reality, data is something that humans are creating and this is based on how we collect and interpret it. In other words, data is part of human, social processes. One example of a project that they were working on is the application of data in algorithms that police use to predict where to place cops around cities, known as predictive policing (what?! I had no idea that technology like this was integrated into policing). Although we can cite data used in systems like this as being “objective,” most data for these algorithms comes from police arrests/reports, and police disproportionately approach/arrest Black folks (vs white folks) which causes the algorithm to skew and send police disproportionately to Black communities which leads to a culture of harassment. [This reminds me of how at a camp I worked at there were 2 bear researchers, and the data they collected about bears in the backcountry was primarily based on reports by scouts. As it turns out, their data of bear existence looked like an outline of the camp’s trail maps since nearly all of the bear sightings happened on trails.]

I think the biggest things that I took away were the ideas that science is a process of asking questions and collecting information about the world and there are many ways to do that (and we generally value one way in our education system/science as a whole in the US). One thing that the Free Radicals suggested that stuck with me was the idea that rather than starting with data, we can start by thinking about our perspective and how we view the world and how that influences our interpretation of data. They also brought up thinking about how we value data vs someone’s lived experiences. Also the Free Radicals have this rad Zine series called “Science Under the Scope” which I’m excited to look at more! (I read the first one, and it’s so good!)

Overall, in terms of application to environmental education, I am thinking a lot about which ways of knowing and ways of “doing science” are valued in the spaces in which I teach and how I can teach western science (which students are expected to learn in schools) while also teaching/privileging/valuing other ways of learning about the world (I think I need to go into detail in this in another blog post).