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Can Biology Class Reduce Racism?

• Bostonian 7y ago
  "COLORADO SPRINGS — Biology textbooks used in American high schools do not go near the sensitive question of whether genetics can explain why African-Americans are overrepresented as football players and why a disproportionate number of American scientists are white or Asian. But in a study starting this month, a group of biology teachers from across the country will address it head-on. They are testing the idea that the science classroom may be the best place to provide a buffer against the unfounded genetic rationales for human difference that often become the basis for racial intolerance. At a recent training in Colorado, the dozen teachers who had volunteered to participate in the experiment acknowledged the challenges of inserting the combustible topic of race and ancestry into straightforward lessons on the 19th-century pea-breeding experiments of Gregor Mendel and the basic function of the strands of DNA coiled in every cell." There are scientists such as Richard Lynn and the late Arthur Jensen who do think there are racial differences in intelligence, and there are scientists who disagree with them. A science class should not cover a controversial topic unless it can do so impartially and objectively, but it is clear from the article that the people developing the new curriculum have made up their minds.