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Eugenic Ideology And Historical Osmosis, Ann G. Winfield

Education Faculty Publications

Issues of inequity in education are plentiful, but too little attention has been paid to the origins of this inequity which is more tangible than has been acknowledged. This paper traces the early twentieth-century formation of our modern system of education by eminent psychologists and statisticians who were enacting their allegiance to the dominant belief system about intelligence and ability as connected to race and class as expressed and formulated by the eugenics movement. Specifically, this paper explicates the role of eugenic ideology in creating a system designed to sort and classify students according to preconceived notions about their ability …