I had not heard the term eugenics until I applied for the New Haven Teachers Institute and was confronted with a choice to select a theme for this curricular unit. I teach 5th and 6th-grade students at Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy within the New Haven School District. My group of students is composed entirely of newcomers from Latin America.
I began researching the term eugenics and exploring ways to teach my students about its effects. In the current Language Arts and Social Studies curriculum of New Haven Public Schools (NHPS), there is very little, if anything, relating to eugenics. No mention of Yale-New Haven as the center of this movement, not even its effects on the city and national policies.
When discussing eugenics with colleagues, the common understanding is that it is about racism and preserving the “white” race. And indeed, maintaining a “pure white breed” was one of the main commitments of eugenics. The concept was coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883 as a method of allegedly preserving the human race through selective breeding. Eugenics then evolved and became a prevalent ideology in the early 20th century. Although eugenics is mainly defined as the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable,1 in practice, it was much more. Erick L. Peterson (2024) describes eugenics as “two things: scientific ideas on the one hand, and medical techniques and the justifications for their use, on the other."2
With the foundation of the American Eugenics Society (AES) in the early 1920s, scholars of all major academic fields came together to research and give validity to its ideas using the scientific and medical techniques referred to by Peterson. The AES was headquartered on the New Haven Green and was led by prominent Yale faculty of the time.
In a column published by the Yale Daily News in 2021, Dora Guo and José García state that the work of the AES “touched the research paradigms and instruction of nearly every discipline — music, art, photography, literature, environmental studies, law, medicine, psychology, biology, sociology, and many others.”3
For most of the 20th century, the ideas promoted by the AES provided critical work that justified policies of exclusion at the expense of the poor, the sick, and any group of people perceived to be different and inferior. Eugenics has shaped educational policies, practices, and attitudes in ways that continue to resonate today.
Even in the earlier onset of the movement, the eugenics ideas met some resistance. But given the ramifications of its policies in the modern era, more is needed to counteract its influence.
This curricular unit aims to explore the effects of eugenics on Latin American immigrant students, focusing on the historical context, psychological consequences, and educational challenges they face, and to inspire them to thrive and contribute to a more just, diverse, and inclusive society.
