The "New Eugenics" and Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session explores the dimensions of the ‘new eugenics’ in education. Two contentions frame the session: first, that the policies and practices of contemporary education both produce and reinforce forms of new eugenics; and second, that the new eugenics in education demand new political and ethical responses from educational researchers. The session takes up issues of new eugenics against a backdrop of what is seen as a now-difficult terrain: the challenges, promises and pitfalls of new bio-social approaches, and the return of biological explanations for racism and sexism in the social sciences. The papers in this session explore topics that speak to the material and representational convergence of the biological, social, political and ethical in contemporary education.

Sub Unit

• Division B - Curriculum Studies / Division B - Section 2: Histories and Futurities (The Frames of Curriculum)

Chair

• Kalervo N. Gulson, University of New South Wales

Papers

• Reframing the School-to-Prison Pipeline Within the New Eugenics of the Carceral State - Subini Ancy Annamma, The University of Kansas

• Soul to Mind: Conditions of Possibility for Brain-Based Learning, Neurological Foundationalism, and Problems of Human-Centrism - Bernadette M. Baker, University of Wisconsin

• "Bright" Children, Genetics, and the Hidden Racism of the New Eugenics - David Gillborn, The University of Birmingham

• The Seduction of Plasticity: Environmental Epigenetics and the New Biological Rationality for Education Policy - Kalervo N. Gulson, University of New South Wales; Matthew Clarke, University of New South Wales

Discussant

• Zeus Leonardo, University of California - Berkeley