Eugenics and Education in America: Institutionalized Racism and the Implications of History, Ideology, and Memory (Complicated Conversation: a Book Series of Curriculum Studies)

Education in America was designed to organize, classify, and sort students according to a definition of ability and human worth provided by a racialized scientism known as eugenics—an ideology whose ultimate goal was the establishment of a superior White race. Eugenicists targeted entire ethnic groups, the urban poor, rural "White trash," the sexually "deviant," Blacks, Jews, Native Americans, Asians, Latino/as, and anyone who did not fit with the pseudo-scientifically established "superior" Nordic race. Education leaders, complaining of children of "worm-eaten stock," established an enduring system to organize and sort students according to perceived societal worth. In exposing and addressing eugenics’ place in our educational system, this book provides a groundbreaking addition to, and exceptional correction of, the history of curriculum in America.