Manufacturing a STEM Reserve Army Through Racial Capitalist Schooling

• In Event: The Emerging Politics of STEM Education: Policy, Discourse, and Governance

Abstract

In this paper I seek to shed light on this question: if there is not a STEM workforce shortage in the U.S. but in fact a surplus, then why is STEM curriculum the major focus of education reform policy? As Teitelbaum (2014) and others have pointed out (Anft, 2013), the STEM work fields in the U.S. have unemployment rates near the national average, salary stagnation and create many short-term employment positions connected to the boom and bust cycle of start-up culture. My paper argues to better understand the STEM myth as it relates to education reform policy in the U.S. we need to view the perceived problem within a human capital development framework. Reframing the STEM crisis myth into the language of human capital production is important because it helps us better understand what is really at stake behind the shroud of “flat world” education policy rhetoric: increasing the amount of available STEM workers in the job market maintains advantageous labor relations for some of the world’s most powerful corporations (Pierce, 2013).

Additionally, I also argue that the STEM worker shortage myth represents an example of racial capitalist governance through neoliberal school reform. Specifically I suggest that the STEM fields, which are overwhelmingly white and male, are part of the legacy of “wages of whiteness” (Du Bois, 1999). Creating the social and work conditions where white workers receive better paying and safer jobs is a historic strategy used by the ruling white elite to divide working groups in the U.S. through governing strategies. I therefore analyze the STEM crisis myth through a racial capitalist lens because it helps highlight how white students and families are able to leverage competitive advantages in the privatized education reform context (such as STEM magnet schools, special STEM charter academies, etc.) increasing the chances of entering the seemingly lucrative STEM fields (Beede et al, 2013). In other words, I am interested here in looking at how the “wages of whiteness” work today in the STEM education policy push which has created one of the most racially stratified fields of work in the U.S. (Landivar, 2013).

In the final section of my paper I extend my analysis of the “wages of whiteness” in the STEM education reform context to the speculative capitalist narrative that drives powerful scientific and technological based industries. In doing so I argue that the future oriented nature of biocapitalist enterprises driving the genetic and pharmaceutical industries has merged with STEM education reform strategies (Hayden, 2003; Cooper, 2008). Just as genetic start-up culture is based on a type of casino capitalism (Sunder Rajan, 2006), STEM education reform is a corporate/state strategy that seeks to create a hyper competitive schooling environment where valuable as well as low-value human capital workers can be produced. Within such a competitive, “flat world” reform context white students and families, I suggest, have a greater number of advantages and privileges to enter the STEM fields and thus represent a contemporary version of how the “wages of whiteness” operated in the industrial period to discipline both white and non-white workers.

Author

• Clayton Todd Pierce, University of Utah