COVID-19 and the limit of science-inclined education policy

COVID-19 Hotspot - 

The coronavirus continues to challenge the logic of the old-world order by spotlighting most of its institutional inadequacies and policy lapses. However, the complementary role of physical and social sciences is reaffirmed for cynics to bear.

It would take a long article to reproduce the origins and imperatives of having both the physical and social sciences taught at colleges and universities. Experiences of COVID-19 has simplified this debate for public consumption.

There is a need to clarify the purpose of education as an important driver of a progressive society. The way education is organized in a country reflects the ideology of the regime in power on a wide range of issues. Education feeds all the sensitive aspects of the economy and informs societal functions.  How a country organizes and delivers its education also reveals its patterns of domination. For instance, when a certain group in a country has unfettered access to the best education that a nation can offer, such a group also obtains and sustains the monopoly of power over the means production.

A good example is when state resources are skewed to privilege policies for one sector over the other; undermine physical sciences over social sciences; affirmative action for one group over the other; and state scholarship for one group and denied to another.  

In the above scenario, a country is likely to get a section of its graduates who are problematized, reduced in esteem, made subjects with limited prospects. This group often strays into careers that are underdeveloped. For a long time, comedy and music suffered such a fate, until a new generation transformed these industries into lucrative, competitive, and attractive ventures.

The COVID-19 is here with us, but scientists have failed to find a timely cure, vaccines, or deliver consistent tests. Much of the COVID-19 work is situated at the community levels and moderated between persons.

This virus is profoundly sensitive and intelligent in selecting its target and population. No one can yet explain why it has shied away from poor Africans. A recent journal article observed that this pandemic has become a great sampling device for social analysis. The author argued that unlike other previous outbreaks, epidemics, or pandemic, COVID-19 has made visible the usually latent societal structures of inequities.

Most societies have embraced the limit of sciences in dealing with COVID-19, thereby turning to break community transmission of COVID-19 using non-scientific measures such as quarantine and physical isolation. The Lancet Journal is full of commentaries decrying potential mental health impacts of these measures. Prolonged quarantine measures may even trigger a wave of psychosocial distress pandemic.  

But most of this work involves the expertise of social workers, sociologists, and community workers in tandem with field scientists.

For instance, public health officials are trained sufficiently and equipped with the science and social theories that attempt to mobilize, understand, organize, and move societies out of danger.

Thus, COVID-19 has demonstrated that a prudent modern society could do with both physical and social sciences such that where one fails, the other compliments. After all, scientific innovations find relevance with its social adaptation. A television could only work with theatres; immunization gained public approval through community interactions; politics define sciences in as much as scientific advancement shapes and defines politics, culture, and traditions. The left-hand washes the right hand.

The beauty of being alive is that we learn every day. The mechanics of life have roots in sciences while the course of daily life is steeped within a complex mesh of social relations.

We now know that with just minimal sciences, such as accurate testing of COVID-19 and proper medical care, the most potent public response to breaking community transmission of a COVID-19 is physical isolation and change in patterns of wasteful consumption.

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