Eugenics and Education in America

Eugenics and Education in America PDF Author: Ann Gibson Winfield
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820481463
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
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.

Eugenics and Education in America

Eugenics and Education in America PDF Author: Ann Gibson Winfield
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820481463
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Inheriting Shame

Inheriting Shame PDF Author: Steven Selden
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780807738139
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
How could so many of America's educational, political and intellectual leaders have advocated such things as institutionalization, segregation and even sterilization of those with ""inferior blood""? How could the racist notion of selective breeding and racial betterment have become an integral part of high school and college biology textbooks? In this work Stephen Selden tells the story of the eugenics movement in America during the early decades of the 20th century. Complete with archival photographs, ""Inheriting Shame"" provides a powerful historical account and refutation of biological determinist ideas. Selden discusses the role played by America's foremost socialists and scientists, popular media, and most importantly, the school textbook, in shaping public consciousness regarding the ""truth"" of biological determinism. Much more than simply an historical overview, ""Inheriting Shame"" concludes with a trenchant analysis of contemporary research evidence of the role that inheritance plays in complex human behaviour - including traits ranging from Down Syndrome to violent behaviour and homosexuality.

The History of Institutional Racism in U. S. Public Schools

The History of Institutional Racism in U. S. Public Schools PDF Author:
Publisher: People & Society
ISBN: 9781942146728
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


American Eugenics

American Eugenics PDF Author: Nancy Ordover
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816635580
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Traces the history of eugenics ideology in the United States and its ongoing presence in contemporary life. The Nazis may have given eugenics its negative connotations, but the practice--and the "science" that supports it--is still disturbingly alive in America in anti-immigration initiatives, the quest for a "gay gene, " and theories of collective intelligence. Tracing the historical roots and persistence of eugenics in the United States, Nancy Ordover explores the political and cultural climate that has endowed these campaigns with mass appeal and scientific legitimacy. American Eugenics demonstrates how biological theories of race, gender, and sexuality are crucially linked through a concern with regulating the "unfit." These links emerge in Ordover's examination of three separate but ultimately related American eugenics campaigns: early twentieth-century anti-immigration crusades; medical models and interventions imposed on (and sometimes embraced by) lesbians, gays, transgendered people, and bisexuals; and the compulsory sterilization of poor women and women of color. Throughout, her work reveals how constructed notions of race, gender, sexuality, and nation are put to ideological uses and how "faith in science" can undermine progressive social movements, drawing liberals and conservatives alike into eugenics-based discourse and policies.

Imbeciles

Imbeciles PDF Author: Adam Cohen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101980834
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction One of America’s great miscarriages of justice, the Supreme Court’s infamous 1927 Buck v. Bell ruling made government sterilization of “undesirable” citizens the law of the land In 1927, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling so disturbing, ignorant, and cruel that it stands as one of the great injustices in American history. In Imbeciles, bestselling author Adam Cohen exposes the court’s decision to allow the sterilization of a young woman it wrongly thought to be “feebleminded” and to champion the mass eugenic sterilization of undesirable citizens for the greater good of the country. The 8–1 ruling was signed by some of the most revered figures in American law—including Chief Justice William Howard Taft, a former U.S. president; and Louis Brandeis, a progressive icon. Oliver Wendell Holmes, considered by many the greatest Supreme Court justice in history, wrote the majority opinion, including the court’s famous declaration “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Imbeciles is the shocking story of Buck v. Bell, a legal case that challenges our faith in American justice. A gripping courtroom drama, it pits a helpless young woman against powerful scientists, lawyers, and judges who believed that eugenic measures were necessary to save the nation from being “swamped with incompetence.” At the center was Carrie Buck, who was born into a poor family in Charlottesville, Virginia, and taken in by a foster family, until she became pregnant out of wedlock. She was then declared “feebleminded” and shipped off to the Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded. Buck v. Bell unfolded against the backdrop of a nation in the thrall of eugenics, which many Americans thought would uplift the human race. Congress embraced this fervor, enacting the first laws designed to prevent immigration by Italians, Jews, and other groups charged with being genetically inferior. Cohen shows how Buck arrived at the colony at just the wrong time, when influential scientists and politicians were looking for a “test case” to determine whether Virginia’s new eugenic sterilization law could withstand a legal challenge. A cabal of powerful men lined up against her, and no one stood up for her—not even her lawyer, who, it is now clear, was in collusion with the men who wanted her sterilized. In the end, Buck’s case was heard by the Supreme Court, the institution established by the founders to ensure that justice would prevail. The court could have seen through the false claim that Buck was a threat to the gene pool, or it could have found that forced sterilization was a violation of her rights. Instead, Holmes, a scion of several prominent Boston Brahmin families, who was raised to believe in the superiority of his own bloodlines, wrote a vicious, haunting decision upholding Buck’s sterilization and imploring the nation to sterilize many more. Holmes got his wish, and before the madness ended some sixty to seventy thousand Americans were sterilized. Cohen overturns cherished myths and demolishes lauded figures in relentless pursuit of the truth. With the intellectual force of a legal brief and the passion of a front-page exposé, Imbeciles is an ardent indictment of our champions of justice and our optimistic faith in progress, as well as a triumph of American legal and social history.

War Against the Weak

War Against the Weak PDF Author: Edwin Black
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9781568583211
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 550

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Book Description
An investigative journalist peels back the lid on a shameful century of mass sterilization and human breeding programs in the U.S. that began in 1904 with a large-scale eugenics movement, a movement that has been reborn in the modern era with the rise of genetics and human engineering. Reprint.

"Destined to Fail"

Author: Julia Eklund Koza
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472132601
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 813

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Book Description
How eugenics became a keystone of modern educational policy

Science for Segregation

Science for Segregation PDF Author: John P. Jackson
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814742718
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
With the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education now upon us, many have begun to reflect upon how the case altered the course of civil rights and education in America.

Eugenics

Eugenics PDF Author: Philippa Levine
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199385904
Category : Eugenics
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
A concise and gripping account of eugenics from its origins in the twentieth century and beyond.

Pure America

Pure America PDF Author: Elizabeth Catte
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781953368195
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The highly anticipated follow-up to What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia explores the legacy of white supremacy in a small Virginia town