Apparently, most schools present relatively reductionist and sanitised views about relationships among fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics and societies and environments (STEM-SE). Despite Science and Technology Studies' research indicating, for example, that STEM-SE relationships often involve combinations of factors both internal (e.g., experiment design) and external (e.g., capitalist contracts with scientists) to the fields, school systems tend to prioritise more internalist perspectives. These often also appear to be very idealised conceptions of STEM fields—suggesting, for example, that they are highly apolitical. Some analysts suggest that difficulties in addressing externalist conceptions may be explained by assuming that vast and complex pro-capitalist ‘dispositifs’ lead schools to idealise professional STEM fields for recruitment purposes and to promote values like: competitiveness and cost externalities that seem largely responsible for serious problems like the climate crisis. Accordingly, since 2006, we have emphasised direct instruction about possibly problematic STEM-SE relationships and corresponding actions to overcome perceived problems. During her research assistantship with us, however, Nicole Kofman (first author here), a student teacher at the time, concluded that our team’s recent approaches have focused too zealously on more externalist perspectives about science. Consequently, she challenged us to ‘meet teachers where they’re at’—such as by exposing them to common internalist ‘misconceptions,’ such as that science practices are largely data-dependent, perhaps not subject to ideological positions, etc. This seems to be a prudent and, perhaps, humbling, message for a project that has ambitiously aimed to dramatically challenge existing socioeconomic systems through science/STEM education.