I am a History and Law teacher at Metropolitan Business Academy in New Haven, Connecticut. Before coming to New Haven Public Schools, I taught at the middle and high school levels, mostly Social Studies and Language Arts, in Meriden, Bridgeport, Waterbury, and Watertown. Metropolitan Business Academy has a population of about 400 students in grades nine through twelve. The majority of students come from the city of New Haven, with around 20% coming from neighboring, more suburban towns through the magnet school program. I have taught Modern World History and Constitutional Law at Metropolitan Business Academy for three years. This is my first year teaching Dual Enrollment Psychology 100, a class for Metropolitan Business Academy students, in partnership with Southern Connecticut State University, to serve as an introduction to college level psychology and an opportunity to earn college credit while still in high school. This is an upperclassmen elective class open to sophomores, junior, and seniors. Students in the Education & Leadership Pathway are encouraged to take this class, but it is open to all Academic Pathways at Metropolitan Business Academy.
In this unit, students will explore the origins of the eugenics movement, its growth and influence on New Haven and the world throughout the 20th century, and its lasting effects to this day in the context of a Dual Enrollment Psychology course. This unit will be looking at the American Eugenics movement as a whole and the American Eugenics Society as a local organization. The eugenics movement and psychology as a scientific discipline were (and sometimes still are) linked in the late 19th century desire to use science to explain human behavior, improve the human experience, and solve humanity’s issues. As the field of psychology was founded from a primarily white, Western European, male perspective, deviations from that demographic were often seen as flawed and in need of correction and/or elimination. This, along with systemic racist and a colonizing mindset, helped foster eugenics, which in turn strengthened the theories of those same early psychologists.
Lesson 1 briefly details the historical origins of eugenics within the context of the history of modern psychology. Lesson 2 focuses on the American Eugenics Society’s founding and connections to Yale University and New Haven, CT as a whole. Lesson 3 will discuss case studies of eugenics as policy, and Lesson 4 examine the legacies of eugenics in postwar American society. The final project is a short research project on one of the lasting legacies of eugenics through to the present day.
