The Cruel Optimism of Neoliberal Ethics in Science Curricula: A Critical Appraisal

• In Event: Science Educations in/against Reactionary Times

Abstract

The world is confronted with wicked environmental problems that cannot be well understood or acted upon without addressing their ethical dimensions. Research shows that official science curricula on environmental science and ecology topics are shaped by the scientific discourse and environmental discourses of ecological modernization and green governmentality. These discourses carry tacit ethical stances that need to be not only acknowledged but also assessed for their suitability in helping us understand and tackle wicked environmental problems. In this paper we analyze the discourses of ecological modernization and green governmentality to uncover their underlying neoliberal ethical moorings. Our analysis indicates that at the macro scale the discourse of ecological modernization embraces a consequentialist ethical standpoint predicated on instrumental, economic rationality for making societal environmental decisions. But at the microscale of daily practices, the discourse of green governmentality seeks to construct a moral neoliberal subject guided by virtue ethics of individual responsibility, self-reliance, and environmentalism as a personal virtue. The inter-braiding of these ethical strands seeks to imbue students with a cruel optimism by promising a happy ever prospering world that their own ethical actions may well deny. We end the paper with a call for a critical examination of the appropriateness of current dominant western ethical frameworks for informing the role of science education in the new Anthropocene Epoch, and an urgent exploration of alternative ethical frameworks that might be better suited for inclusion as components of science education for this new era of unprecedented wicked environmental problems.

Authors

• Ajay Sharma

• Elaine Margaret Alvey, University of Georgia