Pipelines: Why metaphors matter

by Adam Johnston

In all of my meetings and conversations with him, my dean — the head administrator of the College of Science in which I am gainfully employed — is fond of talking about the “STEM pipeline.” Let me be immediately clear on one point: I can’t fault him for this, nor is he alone, nor is this necessarily a deliberately wrong, bad, malicious, or erroneous phrasing. It’s the collective and addictive word choice of our field, and the verbiage is particularly prevalent with those who have to converse on a national stage. (I’d go so far as to say that the higher up you are on an org chart in my business of science education, or the closer you are to the center of some government agency, the more likely you are to evoke the phrase.) Take a moment to google the term, and you’ll find an array of legitimate and even passionate webpages and citations.

And yet, any time I hear the phrase, “STEM pipeline,” I wince. Not just internally, mind you. My reaction has become physical. While I’m readily admitting that I could be alone in this reaction, I’m also telling you that my loathing is real.

“STEM” is the acronym (pronounced just like it looks) for “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.” There are stories about why it’s “STEM” now instead of “METS,” and there are those who could add medicine to make it “STEMM” and maintain the current pronunciation, or include arts of various form and create “STEAM”. Other iterations and stories exist as well, but the central storyline is that the acronym represents scientific fields, applied and pure, of various persuasions, especially in the context of our educational system.

Simply as an acronym, STEM doesn’t move my soul, but it doesn’t give me any ulcers, either. It’s the equivalent of folks in the South referring to a group as “y’all” in order to address them all at once, and with commonalities presumed. It’s efficient, bordering on charming.

It’s the “pipeline” piece that creases my brow. If we are to have STEM professionals in the adult world, then there needs to be some kind of preparation for them. Insert, somewhere in here, a literature review for a doctoral dissertation in science education to describe this process, its shortcomings, and what we might propose to do about it. Somewhere there is the output of these science professionals, and somewhere back in time there are those same individuals as children. The question of “How do we get more qualified STEM professionals” is echoed as “How do we get more kids to fit into the other side of the tube?” And, “How do we get them to stay in there until they get to the other side?” The vision of the pipeline is one in which we make that proverbial tube both wide and long enough, create the right amount of pressure, and assure ourselves that there is as little possibility of leaking as possible. This is where I have my problem.

I have a really clear image of pipes. My dad, himself an engineer, always admired culverts as we drove on logging roads when I was a kid. A good culvert preserves a dirt road by maintaining a flow of water from one side to the other. It keeps things clean and orderly, prevents erosion and keeps the status quo of the road in tact. Other pipes twist and turn under the ground and by the miracle of fluid dynamics displace water from one place to another. We make sure that the pipe is clear of debris and the joints are sealed, and everything works out. We don’t even have to see what’s happening inside those pipes.

Pipes are what we use to drain wastewater or to transport petroleum. Pipes are the rudimentary and passive pathways that get fluids from point A to point B. With the right engineering and cross sectional area, pipes move seawater, sludge, or sewage. The thing is, the pipe and the fluid don’t really do anything. Water, or whatever else you put in a properly designed pipe, is practically predetermined to come out on the other end. Pipes are wonderful at getting out what you put in.

That’s exactly the problem with the pipeline metaphor. On the reality side of the analogy, we’re dealing with people, my children included. True, I could lighten up; it’s a metaphor. Nothing really is “just like riding a bicycle” or “like falling off a log.” We still know what we mean by these phrases in the common vernacular. But I don’t think we really know what we’re talking about with our “pipeline” metaphor, and we may even be deluding ourselves. The problem with our plumbing is not that it has leaks, but because it may be just too passive. On one end of the pipeline there are children, and on the other end we’re imagining scientists. This is no simple work of fluid dynamics. Instead of putting pressure on one side and looking for the drips that come out on the other, we should take out the pipe entirely. We should think of something in which we’re not simply thinking about what the static transport system looks like in its completed form. Instead, we should think not just about the ends of this transport, but about the in-betweens. Moreover, we need to imagine that 13-year-old outside of our constrained pipe. We all know they’re looking around and roaming about. They are living and breathing, and even more important, they are changing right before our eyes.

A child doesn’t just move through our system, but grows in it. Children and young adults need to get out of a pipeline, find a different lane, try on a new hat. Let them spill out and interact with more than some predetermined track. Maybe they need to be on a train, deliberately getting on board, finding new destinations and opportunities at each intersection and transfer to a new route. Maybe we should build a trail system. Perhaps there should be a guided tour. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. Whatever it is, I think that we need to re-envision our track to STEM so that it fosters students’ understanding not just within the path, but allows students to jump in and out of it. Let them leak, so to speak, and foster new talents that we don’t stereotypically imagine for our future STEM professionals. We would do well to look for STEM talent beyond our traditional pipeline. We should have a system that doesn’t feel as if it has to prevent leaks, but instead is motivating enough that it draws people into the natural flow.

Perhaps, in the spirit of the STEM acronym itself, an appropriate metaphor could be a garden. Rather than push particles through, efficiently but passively, we could think of our next generation of STEM professionals and citizens to have been grown. After all, the people in the pipeline we keep talking about are, in all ways, growing. We could do well to recognize this and, rather than constraining growth of a child and hoping that they make it through, provide rich soil, devoted gardeners, and the right amount of water. Most of all, we need to pay attention to more than just the boundary conditions on each end of the pipe. We need to value the dynamic person and all the potential changes, experiments, and curiosities they could develop. We just need to make sure they have the room to do so, and we need to provide them with the support to do this to their greatest potential.

“hard” science

I’m confused and at least a little troubled.

My job is, on the whole, wonderful. In fact, with the exception of when I need to do some accounting, I’m willing to bet that I have one of the best careers imaginable. I get to teach science, as well as work closely with science teachers, research science learning, and just generally promote science education. On the whole, you can imagine that I really like science and teaching, and on any given day they battle for first place in my list of favorite things — with the exception of my family, my dog, and some close friends.

So, you can imagine that I enjoy reading about how we can better promote science and science education with students and the public at large. I wave the Tuesday science insert of the New York Times at my students, rave about work my colleagues are engaged in, and I make them wrestle with their own difficult problems. (Yesterday, for example, we measured a molecule with some cork dust and a ruler.) I subscribe to a variety of posts and feeds along these lines, so it was natural to be referred to this Adam Frank blog piece by NPR as well as several friends. I was intrigued by the title and what scrolled beneath:

• Science: It’s really really hard, and that’s something to celebrate

I’ve engaged with pieces of this general argument before. It goes something like this: We lose a lot of potential science and engineering majors in their first few years of programs because science is hard, and often we do a poor job of really engaging students in authentic ways. As a result, many of these students get seduced by other fields along the way. It could be that science coursework is too hard or poorly instructed. Or, as this particular argument goes, it could be that science should be hard and we should be getting students to celebrate this. Frank puts it this way:

I let them know they are engaged in a sacred task that connects them to millennia of human effort encoded in their genes. If they can fight their way to the truth, the truth will make them free, just as it did for me …

To a large extent, I’ll cheer on the idea that science and scientific fields are hard, intensive, difficult, exhausting, and the like, as well as being rewarding and emancipating. Science does fight its way towards truth, and yes, science is hard, and it should be. After all, a scientist is trying to figure out details of nature that she can’t directly see. Nature doesn’t give us the answers straight out, but rather gives us just enough hints for us to stay hot on the trail, turning around every once in a while when it goes cold and we’ve realized we made a wrong turn. And, I prefer my neurosurgeons and rocket launchers to have some patience, persistence, and scientific pedigree. We should earn our stripes before we cut into another human being or pull at the loose ends of all the knowledge that’s been knit together already.

However, it is easy to take this too far, and I’m given pause when I read a piece like Frank’s. I deplore the argument of “science is hard” as a way to suggest that other fields are easier. If you’d like hard, try writing. If you want really hard, go into education. Physics, in contrast, is a cake walk. I don’t think this is what authors of these arguments mean to say, necessarily. It’s important, however, to make it clear that we aren’t drawing a line between some elite studies and the others. Implicitly doing so may actually be part of our problem.

But this isn’t the main issue I have with this “hard” science argument. I suppose the primary source of this little writing fit has to do with where we point our fingers when we’re making this argument. Implicitly, if we say that “science is hard and students should celebrate this,” we’re putting the burden of our scientific literacy failings on our students. We, the scientists, are further alienating students who are already scratching their heads at us — even if for the wrong reasons. We need to start pointing the finger the other direction. We need to be sure that we’re taking responsibility for our students’ attitudes towards science. No one else will.

The project, “This is what a Scientist Looks Like,” is one example of this kind of effort. It’s a small drop in the bucket, but it’s at least aiming at having scientists contribute to something to help personify and endorse their discipline as something that is human and inviting. Scientists are doing some hard things, as well as some whimsical and fun and serious and even really hard (and still harder!) things. The basic message is that “you” can be a scientist, because just look at all of the examples of those who already are — surely there’s lots of room for a lot of diverse folks, white males, black females, bike riding astrobiologists, and green haired botanists.

It strikes me, though, that projects like this one tend to emphasize the people that these scientists are, rather than the science they’re doing. This isn’t a critique, because it’s all important. But we should also be paying attention to how we’re encouraging scientific disciplines and the work that scientists do. In that “science is hard” argument, the statement generally gets made that “science is power,” or something along these lines. And, yes, this is true, in so many important ways. Yet this is what falls so very very short for me. This power argument is only motivating to those who have a sense of power already. What about those who are just striving for some kind of equality? What about holistic enlightenment? What about a voice? I think in the “science is power” statement we’re unwittingly speaking to ourselves rather than to the diverse sets of others out there. And we wonder why it’s a bunch of competitive white guys from upper-middle class families in our science classes. Because they’re smarter? No. Because they’d make better doctors? Absolutely not. Because we market science to them with statements like “science is hard”? Perhaps. We need to be careful, at least.

All I ask is that we think carefully about our promotion of science. Don’t water it down; don’t make it something less than what it is; don’t diminish its power or enlightenment or thrill of discovery. At the same time, make sure we’re touting it as more than any of these things. Science is for all. It is, like art, music, and democracy, one thing that distinguishes us as humans, for the better. Let’s make sure that we’re inviting, with wide open doors, more than just the choir of scientists already in. We not only need more scientific thinkers, we need a more diverse pool of them. We need to continue to find ways to make this scientific invitation explicitly open and welcoming to all.

not everyone grows up to be an astronaut

by Adam Johnston

As the space shuttle Atlantis landed a few days ago, it marked the completion of the final mission of the program. Depending on how you think and what you read, this is either a sure sign of the collapse of America, or the best innovation that NASA has made since its inception. Being me, I’m somewhere in the conflicted middle. Further spurning my conflict are headlines like this one from NPR:

“A child born today will never see an American space shuttle blast off from the Kennedy Space Center.” (http://www.npr.org/2011/07/16/137860053/post-shuttle-nasa-to-keep-students-looking-up)

A child born today will not see a lot of things, including Golden Grizzlies in California (the state’s mascot, in spite of its extinction so long ago we no longer realize it is something to be missed), a rotary telephone, or an old-fashioned merry-go-round on a gravel playground. I’ll lament all of these losses, but I didn’t know how to think about the end of the space shuttle program until marking this moment of extinction. It gave me a chance to look back and realize that I was especially aware of the shuttle program from beginning to end. When I was a second grader, I remember that the cover of my school’s yearbook featured an image something like this one:

The image I remember was probably of Columbia, marking the inaugural flight of the NASA program. I don’t remember which image it was exactly, but surely it’s the only cover of any yearbook that I have any memory of. I suppose this is because the shuttle and this program captured my imagination; it was the new mode for space travel, and it was just close enough to my image of an X-wing fighter that I embraced its image and its mission — even if I didn’t really understand what it was for.

As I’ve grown older, a bit more insightful if not more mature, I’ve witnessed the program’s celebrations (Hubble Space Telescope’s initiation and subsequent repair) and disasters (I know exactly where I was when the Challenger disaster occurred, and it was the subject of a high school research paper I can still picture the font and spacing of). So, when I think of the NPR headline and the potential impact that the space shuttle program has had on me, I wonder if the end of this chapter in human exploration is also a stab in the heart of science education. What enduring image will today’s second grader have on her yearbook? Perhaps it will be one of a lonely janitor sweeping up the last remaining dustballs of an empty hangar at Cape Canaveral.

But, there are many more images than those of moon landings, shuttle launches, or even Hubble Space Telescope images. There are french fries:

http://despair.com/potential.html

This graphic represented October, I think, on a wall calendar of mine a few years ago. In spite of the fact that it flew in the face of my attitude that science is for everyone and all people have capacity to succeed, it tickled the cynic in me. To make the image that much more indelible, I once had the interaction with a student from someone else’s class when he’d come looking for some help with his physics homework. Sitting down, we stared at a problem that he’d clearly misunderstood and I started to diagnose and prescribe new routes. Without any obvious prompt other than his own frustration, he turned his head and stared up at this image on my wall. His face twisted and his brow wrinkled, and then admitted, “I don’t get it.” I tried to explain, and yet it seemed clear that the author of the image had this very student in mind when the caption was inked.

I giggle when I tell this story, but really it was just an unfortunate intersection of a frustrated physics student with an overly satirical message. I took the photo down later, and replaced it with another that represented university committee work. I had a wide range to choose from.

Here’s where all this leaves me: The imagery of the space shuttle versus the despair associated with asking “do you want fries with that?” is a false choice. There are lots of options in between — my own career path being one of them. In fact, maybe NASA, space shuttles, astronauts, and all that we associate with these things all represent the opposite of what we should be trying to promote to our public, especially our youth. Currently, the options might be presented as “you could be an astronaut,” but without any fallback or intermediate. When was the last time that we created a poster that stated “not everyone gets to be a geologist when he grows up?” Why is a research scientist who tries to understand the scale of nature at the microscopic cellular level not admired as much as those we launch only so far into space that we can still see them — with an unaided eye — when they’re in orbit? Why didn’t any of my yearbook covers have an image of a particle accelerator, a newly discovered arthropod, or a map of the Martian surface? Why had I never even heard of the possibility of medical physics until I was looking into graduate schools?

I think it may be that we don’t know how to represent science, either as a personal endeavor or as a professional pursuit. You can be an astronaut or you can serve fries, we seem to say. So, maybe, just maybe, if we take advantage of this new opportunity, we can push other science to center stage. Not everyone gets to be an astronaut, and that’s a good thing. There is much more to science than jet propulsion and a manifest destiny kind of attitude towards staking claims, a canine-esque marking of our territory. There are so many other extraordinary existences we all have the potential to create for ourselves — especially those which create new understandings that can be shared with all others among us. We should celebrate and promote these.