Dystopian DNA? Public Education, Genetics, and the Popular Imagination

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

A new modality of racism and classism connected to genetics is emerging, one that challenges the possibilities and necessities of equitable education and naturalizes inequalities and borders. This symposium explores the threats and possibilities that historical and emerging biosocial sciences pose to equitable public education, particularly in relation to race and class. Panelists critically engage with Science-informed arguments in education, mapping the hold historical and new knowledge continue to have on the imaginations of educators and educational institutions. This session explores how biosocial scientific research provides multiple conceptualizations of social inequality – particularly as it relates to race and ethnicity - and shapes understandings of structures of oppression that inhibit the most marginalized students from receiving equitable quality public education.

Sub Unit

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

Chair

• Prudence L. Carter, University of California - Berkeley

Papers

• "Giftedness" in K–12 Schooling: A New Eugenics - Claire E. Crawford, University of Birmingham

• "DNA Dreams": Behavior Genetics and the Reinscription of Biodeterminism in Education - Daphne Martschenko, University of Cambridge

• Race, Class, and the Neurologic Construction of Antisocial Behavior - Oliver Rollins, University of Pennsylvania