Human Centered Design of Biotechnology

Introduction and Rationale

In July 2021, India announced that it was considering a two-child policy in order to keep its growing population under control, even offering cash benefits to those who are voluntarily sterilized. Such a policy is reminiscent of China’s one-child policy that helped curb and plateau its population. Now, with the Chinese population growing much more slowly, India is projected to be the most populous country before 2030.¹ But this proposal raises several questions: why does this matter? Why would a government want to limit the size of its population? How does the population growth in India compare to other countries? These are all questions I suspect my AP Environmental Science (AP-ES) students would ask were we to read about this proposal as a current events activity. The answer to such questions lies in an a deep understanding and analysis of a phenomenon known as the Demographic Transition, which helps explain how populations respond to changes in their country’s modernization.² Understanding the Demographic Transition is critical to students’ overall success in AP-ES, as it sets the stage for the remainder of the course. But currently my lessons on it include the presentation of facts and figures and vocabulary terms. I think this topic deserves to be told as a story, one with a focus on the who, the how, and the why of this phenomenon.

If I were to ask my students what they thought the greatest human invention was, I would expect responses like the internet, cell phones or other modern electronics. Some may chime in with fire, agriculture, or the written word. But I bet that I could go far down their list of amazing inventions without coming across the newborn incubator. By number of years of life added, these medical devices are arguably the most important medical innovation of the 20^th century. As Steven Johnson details in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, this invention had a dramatic impact on infant mortality rates in the modern world. Successive iterations of the rudimentary device originally developed helped decrease the infant mortality rate by 75% in the US from the end of World War II to 1998. What is so amazing about the newborn incubator is its simplicity. Essentially, it is designed to keep newborn babies warm (although modern versions are much more than that). Before this invention, infant mortality rates were incredibly high, even in what is considered the developed world.³ Sadly in many “developing” countries, infant mortality remains high due to lack of access to proper medical care or adequate public health infrastructure. In such places, communicable diseases are especially deadly to newborns and children. The lack of medical technology and public health infrastructure represent significant constraints to life expectancy and quality of life.

Because of such constraints, throughout the vast majority of our species’ existence, the human population was largely stable. Major growth did not happen until the advent of agriculture. Even then, the growth of human population was centered in regions where agriculture provided enough food to allow for permanent settlement. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution began in the 1800s that our population began growing immensely. And even that growth was eclipsed by the massive growth brought on by the modernization of economies in the 20^th century.⁴ These are facts that students may learn in their introductory geography classes in 9^th grade. But for most students this is largely the upper limit to which students study how, why, and where populations change, and what happens to countries, economies, and people as a result of those changes. This unit, designed to replace an existing one in AP Environmental Science (AP-ES), focuses in greater detail on the driving forces and consequences of such population changes. It focuses mostly on the historical human population, the Demographic Transition in particular, and environmental consequences of population change.

School Profile

William Penn High School is a public high school in the Colonial School District in New Castle County, DE. It is the only high school in the district and is the largest high school in the entire state, serving between 2,000 and 2,300 each year across grades 9-12.⁵ The district is considered suburban/urban fringe and serves a diverse population in terms of both race and income. Several years ago, William Penn began focusing on the growth of Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs that provide opportunities for students to experience a vocational-type education while still being provided with the traditional college preparatory education typical of public schools. Such a shift has allowed the school to retain students who may otherwise attend one of the four area Vo-Tech schools. Students entering William Penn chose a degree program to specialize in within one of three college academies: Business, Humanities, or STEM. Degree programs within the Business College Academy include Air Force JRTOC, Business Administration, Culinary Arts, Financial Services, and Accounting. Degree programs with the Humanities College Academy include Behavioral Sciences, Communications, Teacher Academy, Legal Studies, International Studies, and Visual and Performing Arts. The STEM College Academy offers degree programs in Agriculture, Allied Health, Computer Science, Construction, Engineering, Manufacturing, Mathematics, and Science. William Penn also offers 25 Advanced Placement courses, the greatest largest number of any school in the state. This dual focus on college and career readiness has greatly improved the school culture and the school’s image in the community, which has translated to the growth in the student population.

Rationale

This growth in student population and interest in the sciences helped me justify the need for adding APES to the course catalog in the 2016/17 school year. Students enrolled in the Agriculture degree program can specialize in the Environmental Science pathway, which requires them to take two years of on-level environmental science before enrolling in APES as their capstone course. Since the course is officially part of a CTE program, students are expected to finish the course with some sort of job-applicable skill. A unit on the Demographic Transition and its connections to biotechnology offers me a recruiting chip to students in the Allied Health field. They have an opportunity to apply what they learn in their pathway courses in a different setting. Likewise, they can use their experiences in my class as context for the material from their pathway courses. To me, getting students to think critically about environmental problems and potential solutions is my primary goal, but I am always looking for ways to address those job skills as well. Learning how to find, select, scrutinize, and analyze data in order to construct an evidence-based argument or conclusion certainly falls under that umbrella.