The 7th grade students will be taking a deep dive into some of the principles of Eugenics through a back door approach to considering: IQ, Genes, Brains, Sorting, Classifying, and Data. This deep dive process will give great comprehension of how artists brainstorm, research, sketch, edit ideas, and design in order to participate in the art process. Students will see first hand that art making is not just placing lines, colors, shapes, and using art materials together. Students will see art making is a deep reflection process that often is in response to something else. Students will see that their eyes and brain working together to connect to something deeper than what is present on the page. This S.T.E.A.M. unit is revealing the design art process so students will see through their own trial and errors that rarely is art created for no intended deeper purpose.
I want to close this unit introduction or “hook” the 7th grade students with a few personal questions or shares on how many families are impacted by the practices of IQ assessment, genetic family history, complex system of brains, sorting, classifying, data collecting, and more. I wonder if students feel after listening and seeing all the student google slideshows if they see that we are all victims of eugenic systems, even without knowing exactly how. The Shortest History of Eugenics “Historically, eugenics was actually two things: scientific ideas, on the one hand, and medical techniques and the justifications for their use on the other. Each had a separate trajectory, its own history. Each flourished in different places and at different times, often overlapping, but not everywhere all the time.” The SAT is one area of how that test impacts many acceptances or rejections. I will remind students of my original question that if eugenics was still openly practiced would my Jewish mother, who is the oldest of six children, have been able to have conceived me, when selecting to marry a man outside her same religious faith? I question when my female cousin Hailey died at four months old of SMA in 2002 due to her parents carrying a gene with genetic abnormalities of SMA, would her parents been able to have two more boys one naturally and one using pre screening tests, or would my cousin been discouraged or worse prevented? If eugenics had a say today my last personal question is regarding when my cousin that had a brain aneurysm from a drug overdose would her mental health issues or addiction have been a reason to prevent further reproductions?
In concluding this S.T.E.A.M. unit I want teachers and students to ask themselves many questions. For example, is there another way to gauge student growth from one unit of study to the next unit of study? Is there another way to instruct any given unit plan? How can students gain knowledge without solely sitting in a class seat, reading teacher directed texts, and then stating proof of comprehension in front of peers for an entire class period week after week? Can educators upskill or rethink singular teaching approaches? Can teachers shift from teacher centered to student centered inquiry? This S.T.E.A.M. unit will hopefully allow teachers new ways to consider the S.T.E.A.M. domains and how to apply methods to previous units taught. What role do teachers have in the student learning process? What personal teaching style has been most comfortable and could that style benefit with upscaling? For students want them to see the world with more curiosity like when they were little, and maybe they lifted rocks up to see if a bug was underneath.
