Decolonising Isn't Just for the Humanities, Science Needs Decolonising Too

It seems as though so many conversations about decolonising the curriculum, be it in universities, or in schools, centre on humanities subjects. Recent examples that spring to mind are conversations about decolonising the canon of Literature courses by diversifying reading lists; or focusing on the missing perspectives in History lessons by trying to teach children about the British Empire and its activities in schools.

These initiatives are crucial. But as I took my first steps into academic roles, both in teaching at university, and conducting research as a PhD candidate in History of Science, I’ve realised that we need to focus on decolonising science education too.    

My experiences as an educator thus far have highlighted the difficulties that follow the way we teach students about the scientific method. We teach students in primary school that science is not about feelings, but that it’s objective; it’s based in facts; it’s something that can be controlled, so that it is unaffected by the environment in which it is carried out. It’s a powerful narrative.

It’s also a narrative I wholeheartedly bought into as an undergraduate student studying towards a degree in the Physiological Sciences. To me, Science was something cold, clinical, and removed from the world outside of the lab. Science was ‘objective’ and other fields of study were ‘subjective’ as far as I was concerned. And why would I think any differently? It was all I’d ever been told.  

When I began my Master’s studies, I encountered a more critical approach to science. I studied science and its relationship to policy for the first time. “Who here thinks that science might be better funded if we had more scientists in Parliament?”, asked the lecturer who would go on to become one of my PhD supervisors, grinning as hands naively went up around the room before explaining that we’d already had a scientist as Prime Minister - Margaret Thatcher, who had systematically cut funding to science. After that session and countless others, the floodgates were well and truly open.

I studied the history of science for the first time, aged 22, and realised that science cannot be objective. Scientists are human and fall victim to the same biases we all do. In fact, they tend to reproduce these biases all the time. Science is not only not objective, it has never been ‘objective’. Science, like any other activity has been racist, sexist, ableist, capitalist and a tool of imperialism. 

When I looked at the history of my own previous field of study, I realised that advances in physiology and anatomy had been made due to the brutalisation of Black bodies, ranging from the experimentation on enslaved Black women in the US to the theft of biological material from women like Henrietta Lacks, decades later. It was a wake up call.

Now, I try to impart some of this knowledge as a Graduate Teaching Assistant on History of Science courses at the university, but it’s not easy. Undergraduate students struggle with the idea that their studies aren’t free from the systems of oppression that exist in our society, or of political agendas. 

Often, our efforts getting students to try and understand some of these ideas feels like a losing battle. I once had a student argue that Rosalind Franklin, whose work was stolen by her male peers, couldn’t have possibly been subject to discrimination because of her gender. Another student in the same class could concede that the Black women working at NASA as computers for flight trajectories during the 1960s, were victims of sexism, but couldn’t understand that they were subject to racist discrimination, too. Students regularly turn a blind eye to the way the politics of the historical eras we examine together has shaped the scientific discoveries they are familiar with. 

It is hard to challenge decades-long assumptions about science. And there is work to be done when it comes to science education, and not just at university level. We need to start these lessons earlier. Decolonising scientific knowledge is crucial, and there is a long way to go yet.

Iqra Choudhry

University of Manchester PhD Candidate at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine

she/her