The Power of Stories

The key to challenging stereotypes lies in the stories we tell - no matter the discipline.

Hello to you 👋🏻 and how has your week been?

I met some fantastic new people this week.

On Tuesday, I chaired a science education workshop. Specifically, around building an inclusive science curriculum at GCSE. In attendance were all kinds of people … teachers, school leaders, representatives from the Institute of Physics, consultants and people from exam boards.

One of the big themes that emerged was stereotypes. Physics is especially hard-hit, and girls are significantly underrepresented at every level. Across all the sciences, though, some pervasive and deep-rooted stereotypes exist:

• Students have stereotyped views of science and what a scientist looks like.

• Caregivers have stereotyped views of science careers and often of the value of science, more generally.

• Our BFF, the Department for Education, has stereotyped (and frankly outdated) views of the scientific knowledge that young people want and need in their lives.

So what to do about it?

Let’s start with a quote from the wonderful human, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:

And that’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it?

For a long time, having scientific knowledge and being a scientist were privileges that only a minority of people in Britain enjoyed. If you weren’t white, male and able to access university education, you weren’t part of that world. That is one story.

The problem is that the other stories - the stories of women and people of colour being scientific innovators, the stories of diverse career pathways in science, even the widening of university access - have not been shouted loudly enough.

And so here we are:

A single-story narrative that is holding science (and people) back.

Skewed Perceptions & History

Telling more than one story means knowing the history.

It doesn’t matter if it’s science, maths, geography, pizza-making, marketing or even skiing.

If you don’t know the history, you will never counter the skewed and stereotyped perceptions that dominate the subject.

The past is, quite literally, the future.

In this ongoing experiment I call ‘Integrated Histories,’ I hit the same snag over and over when I’m trying to compile stories of people from diverse communities. And the snag might not be what you expect it to be.

It’s not that I can’t ‘find’ people from diverse backgrounds.

It’s that I can’t find the right stories.

What is this ’right story',’ I hear you ask? 👂🏻

Well, let’s use the Gypsy and Roma communities as an example. People from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities have been in England since the early 16th century. They’ve been living and working here for a LONG time. Despite this, people from GRT backgrounds face particularly high levels of prejudice and discrimination. Children from GRT backgrounds are more likely than any other group to leave school without a single qualification. And yes, it is true that some people in the community remove their children from school early. But let’s avoid the single story: research shows that one of the reasons they do this is because of high levels of racism and xenophobia at school.

Finding people from GRT communities in the 18th and 19th centuries doesn’t require mountains to be moved, though it does require a bit of creativity. Two excellent places to look are contemporary newspapers and court records.

The problem with these sources, though, is that you get a very one-sided view because you’re only seeing these communities in extreme situations: when a person is accused of a crime or the victim of a crime, or when an economically privileged person writes to a newspaper to complain about Gypsy women reading fortunes. (The latter happened A LOT).

The language is also awful. Think “tinkers,” “tramps,” “Egyptians,” “beggars” and “vagabonds.” Researching the experiences of Black people is also horrible for this reason.

I do not want to write history that victimises people.

I want to write history that has depth and reflects the variety of lived experiences. But in doing that (or trying to), I have to accept that so many sources only tell one story. I also have to accept that stereotypes are intertwined with and created by that single story.

It makes my brain do this: 🤯

But it is possible to bring balance to the extremes. How exactly?

That, my friends, is a story for another day.

Until next time,

Kaye x

P.S. For an extra history fix:

🖤 Watch/listen to ‘The Danger of A Single Story.’

🖤 Learn some new history for Muslim History Month.

🖤 Join the Institute of Physics’ Limit Less campaign to bring more young women into the subject.