I have been teaching biology and other science courses at the high school level for the past fifteen years. I am currently teaching biology at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of an international cultural exchange program. My academic background includes master’s degrees in Biology, Biochemistry and Astrophysics, and I have always approached science education as a rigorous discipline and as a powerful tool to understand and rethink the world in which we all live in.
Participating in the Anti-Eugenics seminar has profoundly changed the way I think about my teaching. It made me realize how many classroom practices are still shaped by the legacy of eugenic thinking, often without us even noticing. This reflection has been both eye-opening and necessary and it made me clear that challenging these assumptions is not optional but fundamental to become a more ethical, accurate and inclusive science teacher.
New Haven is a city with a deep and often unspoken connection to the history of eugenics. Just blocks from where my students learn and grow, the American Eugenics Society once promoted policies of sterilization, segregation, and exclusion — all in the name of “science”. That history is not distant. It’s still with us. And whether we realize it or not, its legacies still shape how we teach, how we test, and how our students experience science education every day in our classrooms.
This unit is my response to that legacy. It is designed as the culminating unit in the biology curriculum, but its purpose reaches far beyond the content of a single lesson or final project. This is an invitation for you, my fellow teachers, to pause, to reflect, and to ask ourselves some hard but necessary questions: How might eugenic thinking still live on in our classrooms in the ways we explain genetics, in the ways we sort and assess students, or in the assumptions we carry about ability or intelligence?
What I pretend with this unit is not just about teaching students the historical facts of the eugenics movement. It is about transforming how we teach science itself. It is about helping students — and ourselves — unlearn the genetic determinism and scientific reductionism that continue to reinforce injustice. It is about naming and dismantling the remnants of eugenics that still hide in plain sight: in standardized testing, in race-based medical myths, and even in the stories we tell about what it means to be “smart” or “successful.”
Throughout the unit, students will explore real-world connections and develop the tools to recognize eugenic arguments, challenge genetic essentialism, and think critically about how scientific knowledge is used in society. But just as importantly, this unit is for us, the teachers. We have to reexamine our curriculum, our assessments, and our own scientific habits of mind. It is necessary to resist dominant narratives that naturalize inequality, and to embrace a vision of biology education that is accurate, inclusive, and justice-oriented.
We cannot undo the past, but we can interrupt its continuation and repetition. For this, we have to teach science with more honesty and with all its complexity. This unit is my humble small step towards that transformation.
