Table 1 Summary of Sect. "Context: genetic determinism, genetics curriculum, and eugenics"
Section | Main claims of this section |
|---|---|
2 Context: genetic determinism, genetics curriculum, and eugenics | Genetics and evolution curricula fail to address and can even reinforce essentialist and deterministic views of human nature because they offer a partial account of the genetic architecture of complex traits, focusing solely on the influence of single nucleotide differences on such traits |
2.1 The Genetic Lottery in the context of genetic determinism in evolutionary biology and science teaching | The "Wilson-Dawkins Plomin" (WDP) view, embraced in The Genetic Lottery (Harden 2021), accords nucleotide base pair differences a central causal role in determining complex trait architectures, including human behavioral traits. In The Genetic Lottery, indices such as heritability and polygenic risk scores (PRS) are claimed to predict a person's educational and economic success, and it is proposed that fairness in education requires that students be given opportunities according to their genomic variation |
2.2 What about eugenics? | The education policy recommendations articulated in The Genetic Lottery are not clearly distinct from traditional forms of eugenics, according to which social policies should promote success of individuals with privileged inheritance. This is despite apparent claims to the contrary in The Genetic Lottery |