Humans have been using yeast to make bread for at least 5 000 years, and possibly longer. Yeast can reasonably be considered humanity’s ‘oldest industrial microorganism’. Yeast, a living, single-celled fungus, feeds on the sugars and starches in bread, releasing carbon dioxide, which is what makes the bread rise. Bread-makers and chemists alike understand bread-making as chemistry. Amadea Avogadro is generally understood to bethe first scientist who understood the basic premise of chemistry: That elements could exist as molecules, or chemical compounds. He first articulated what is now known as ‘Avogadro’s Law’ in 1811, meaning that the practice of chemistry predates the theoretical understanding of chemical processes by thousands of years.
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The problem with “We need more women in—”
Stephanie Vasko, writing for Slate, advocates for STEM programs to include practice, in the form of traditional arts, to promote social justice and feminist ideals, claiming ‘the combination of sewing, crafting, making and STEM offers educators a critical opportunity to explore ethics and social justice with students’. Vasko goes on to claim that most of the individuals populating what she describes as the ‘maker movement’ consisting of ‘makerspaces’ or ‘making activities’ are white, privileged and male. Vasko fails to explain the phenomenon of Asian students excelling at ‘making activities’, particularly the activities of ‘making’ computer algorithms, and the corollary trend for women to engage in STEM related educations and activities only until they become wealthy enough to choose subjects that interest them. ‘I’m tired,” Vasko writes, ‘of organizations being set up to tell young women and young brown and black men that they should aspire to be young white men’.
Vasko’s assertion that crafts belong traditionally to women and men of color is partially correct in that virtually all crafts were originally practiced by men exclusively, as evidenced by guilds. The earliest known baker’s guild was established in 168 BC in Rome and allowed men to pass on their memberships to sons. And while spinning wool for use in textile production was very likely a woman’s occupation (hence the word ‘spinster’), the weavers were men. Top practitioners of individual crafts were called ‘master craftsmen’, who passed on secrets gleaned through practice to younger apprentices.
As the Industrial Revolution progressed, many traditional crafts became automated, dramatically reducing the cost of things like bread and clothing. The men who might formerly have been master craftsmen now became the scientists who explored the technology and theory that permitted even faster and cheaper production. Traditional crafts became hobbies for women, but for most of human history, they were vital to economic activity and run largely by men.
In advocating for STEM majors to increase their already significant workload to study crafts that eventually led to theories they must learn, Vasko inadvertently advocates for all students to become white, privileged and male, because privileged, white males were those craftsmen for most of human history. Encouraging students, especially women and men of color, to learn the theories and mathematics that inform STEM, rather than focus on the practical applications is the truly radical act.
It does little good if our chemists can bake a perfect baguette but fail to understand the consequences of crushing nickel hydrazine perchlorate with a mortar and pestle.
Boom.
[Ed. Note: this article originally appeared at Examiner.com and is reprinted here with permission. Subscribe to Janet’s Examiner articles here.]
