Science Para El Barrio

Abstract

I am the son of my mother. My mother, among many other attributes, is a protector of earth. I am a science educator. While growing up in NorthEast Los Angeles, my mother taught me science. She did not sit me at a desk and lecture me, she showed me. She did not deposit knowledge for memorization, rather she engaged me in practice. She is a healer, she is a chemist, she is a physicist, she is a botanist, she is a biologist. My mother only completed three years of formal education. From a western perspective of education this might mean that she is illiterate and does not possess the adequate qualification to be considered a knowledgeable individual. That belief however, is wrong. It is a byproduct of a mindset within a colonial framework. That belief is a byproduct of colonization. Colonization is a violent, insidious process that harms everything it touches. Present conditions for what is considered valid knowledge are not natural, but unnatural and built on the belief that certain knowledge is valuable and other knowledge is not.