Curiosity as Anti-Standard: Paradoxes of Inequality and Inclusion in Cold War-Era US Science Education Reforms

Abstract

Today, appeals to curiosity promise equitable science education affirming the natural potential of minoritized students and expansive pedagogies as an alternative to techno-rationalist achievement standards. By examining curiosity’s history as a psychological object and pedagogical tool, we complicate this received narrative, examining how curiosity often serves as a paradoxical anti-standard—contesting one set of standards while nonetheless imposing its own. Appeals to awakening “natural” curiosity impede reflection on how this construct has operated in US science education to divide children as latent resources for (or threats to) national growth or economic competitiveness based on the amount or kind of curiosity they seem to display. In this historical epistemology, we draw on archival and literature analysis of Cold War-era US science education reforms to examine key premises that posit curiosity as an anti-standard, inscribing it as an ontological foundation for distinguishing and developing certain kinds of science learners. We examine how curiosity emerged as (a) a scientific ideal for ranking individuals and nation-states, (b) a natural attribute for comparing the development of species and subpopulations, and (c) an index for appraising the quality of children’s school and home environments. While some uptakes of curiosity sought to overturn hierarchies (e.g., IQ) by attesting to groups’ natural potential, such efforts often reinscribed the norms erased by curiosity’s naturalization, as well as the inequalities its use naturalized. We conclude by outlining paradoxes still facing efforts to mobilize curiosity to counter exclusionary, assimilationist, and unjust forms of science education today.